The year 2022 was a good year for smart, surprising horror movies. A few of my favorites include the sophisticated monster in the basement shocker Barbarian, Jordan Peele’s slick sci-fi western Nope, and the 70s-inspired Texas porn star slaughter X. There was also a successful reboot of my favorite 80s horror franchise, the goth kid classic Hellraiser.
Alex Garland’s surreal movie Men, about a widow in the countryside terrorized by the locals, didn’t work, but the climax was a mesmerizing flesh nightmare. Speaking of, 79-year-old David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future is another of that maestro’s many masterpieces, a bananas body horror starring Viggo Mortensen as an artist who grows new organs inside of himself.
The European family drama Speak No Evil slowly dissolves into madness. In Smile (check for the sequel next weekend), a woman is stalked by a grinning force of evil. Both are well done and deeply upsetting.
And this is a short list.
But then there’s Terrifier 2, the hit neo-grindhouse sequel to 2016’s Terrifier, which was a sadistic low-budget homage to 80s horror movies where madmen kill kids creatively. The original was a cult hit, and its infamy has only grown amongst fans of gross-out cinema.
Both were directed and written by Damien Leone, a filmmaker who knows exactly what kinds of films he wants to make. His plan for Terrifier 2 was admirably simple: more of what made the first so popular.
Terrifier 2 is a crowdfunded Grand Guignol that can’t decide if it’s ironic or deadly serious, and that vacillation between winks and shrieks is one of the movie’s few charms. There aren’t that many.
The star of Terrifier and Terrifier 2 is Art the Clown, a mime from hell with rotten teeth who combines Freddy Krueger’s mocking cruelty and Pennywise’s supernatural menace. This time, he has a partner-in-mass-murder, too. The Pale Girl is Art The Clown’s sidekick, a girl with strange powers who loves to mutilate people.
The movie is both trashy and self-indulgent, a repellent mix of gratuitous violence and long boring conversations between actors trying to make their acting schools proud and, largely, failing. I watched the entire two-hour and twenty-eight-minute make-believe snuff film. There were times I paused it, stared out the window, and recuperated. I don’t recommend Terrifier 2 unless you’re into handfuls of slick entrails.
I don’t mean to be negative. I meant it when I wrote that Terrifier 2 has some appealing qualities, very few but still.
Terrifier 2 is a more faithful celebration of 80s b-movies than cultural mega-hits like Netflix’s Stranger Things, for instance, the streamer’s big-budget love letter to vintage Stephen King horror, The Goonies, and other Reagan-era basement-dwelling nerd obsessions.
Stranger Things doesn’t accurately remember what 80s shlock was like, but Terrifier 2 does.
Memory is like an artificial sweetener — the dreck romanticized by Gen X directors was never any good. Sure, there were occasional flashes of brilliance during that era. I will defend Frank Henenlotter’s 1982 Basketcase, a grotesque revenge tale about a man and his twin brother, a murderous ball of flesh and teeth that lives in a wicker basket.) But for every Evil Dead or The Thing, there were dozens and dozens of cheap direct-to-video splatterfests.
There are some truly disgusting acts of violence in Terrifier 2 — scalpings, decapitations, and repeated eyeball trauma. Blood sprays, guts spill, and victims scream. The murders go on and on and on — just when you think Art the Clown has stabbed his last, he stabs, slices, and chops again.
This movie rated G for “Gag,” as in “If you watch Terrifier 2, you will gag.” I had made the terrible choice of eating multiple bowls of turkey chili before watching a movie that probably used turkey chili to represent gore. If you dare to watch Terrifier 2, learn from my mistakes. Watch it on an empty stomach.
Let me put it to you this way: the only time a movie has made me physically ill was 2011’s Human Centipede 2, which, in case you don’t know, is about a lunatic who sews twelve humans together, mouth to butthole, to form the title, um, character? It’s a movie I will never watch a second time, it's a true silver-screen vomit rocket. Terrifier 2 makes other torture porn of that era, like Saw and Hostel, look reserved by comparison.
There were movies in the 80s that my childhood friends and I whispered about: Cannibal Holocaust, The Prowler, Nekromantik. Legendary, forbidden fruits. Each of those movies is disgusting, and they have zero social value. I loved them as a teen, and I can only hope that fifteen-year-olds are watching Terrifier 2 in defiance of their parent's wishes, squirming and screaming and laughing.
This foul picture is practically built for suburban malcontents who want to shock mom and dad, and it 100% works on that level. I don’t know if that’s Leone’s only mission; I think he’s a guy with ambition. But if I had teens, I’d tell them not to watch Terrifier 2 — I’d warn them of its dangers!— and then quietly accept that they’re going to see it.
I had a nightmare the first time I saw A Nightmare On Elm Street (it was the third one, which is also the best one.) I had stayed up too late, eaten too much candy, and watched a movie for adults. I was proud of that nightmare, I was proud that I had scared myself silly and survived.
Leone is also inspired by the classics, like Wes Craven's grimy The Last House On The Left and Halloween, John Carpenter’s genre-defining sleepy suburban slasher. The dude is not artless. He’s part of a creative tradition that defiantly, almost courageously, celebrates mortal terror.
Terrifier 2 wants to be about more than mayhem, and in the spirit of the best of the genre Leone loves, he tries to comment on bigger social issues, but you can’t always have your cake full of brains and eat it too.
The plot isn’t important. Terrifier 2 takes place during Halloween (of course), and it follows resurrected Art the Clown’s relentless pursuit of Laura LaVera’s “final girl,” Sienna, and her brother Jonathon, played by Elliot Fullman. Both those actors do their jobs admirably, as do the other supporting characters who only exist to be butchered and burned to death.
As Art, David Howard Thornton is, surprisingly, funny. He’s a gifted physical comedian,, but the role of the silent killing machine is always limited. Still, his clown loves what he does for a living: carving up teens and their parents like their Thanksgiving turkeys.
Yes, Terrifier 2 is a movie lacking any redeeming qualities. It is poorly written, acted, and shot. If I had to sum it up in one word, I’d use “draining.” But I was taught that if I can’t say anything nice, not to say anything. Simple. I have something nice to say: Leone has a vision, and he sticks to that vision while sticking knives into bellies.
Maybe you like killer clowns, or you don’t. It turns out that I don’t like them as much as I thought I did. I have a limit. Terrifier 2 is my limit. I am old and sensitive now. This movie is the anti-Paddington 2. The absolute opposite in every conceivable way. It’s just repulsive. Viewer beware. Unless, of course, you’re into this sort of thing. Then viewer enjoy?
Grief. Friendship. Jazz hands. My debut memoir, ‘Theatre Kids,’ is now available for purchase. You can order it at Amazon or Barnes & Noble or support your local independent bookstore. Look how happy I am (don’t worry, I’m dead inside.)
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of John DeVore's work on Medium. \