After becoming a true phenomenon in 2016, expectations around the sequel to Terrifier have only grown. The protagonist, the killer clown Art the Clowndebuted in the short film The 9th Circle and later his story was developed in another 20-minute short called Terrifier which preceded the feature film of the same title.
Damien Leone, its director, has always opted for a completely independent production that has allowed him to enjoy almost unprecedented creative freedom and, therefore, total control of his product…R-Rated to the song! We are before a very gore slasherexplicit as can be and where you can express your talent as a specialist in practical special effects and makeup.
VIDEO
Terrifier 2 Exclusive Clip – Trick or Treat
If the first Terrifier was a tribute from beginning to end to the cinema of the late 70s and early 80s thanks to the grain of the film, its duration, the music, the approach to the characters and not a few creative decisions, Terrifier 2 it is something very different that will surprise the audience (without missing the heinous murders or the tons of hemoglobin).
The first thing that stands out is that Leone wants to grow the franchise by giving Art a mythology of his own but that is not fully revealed in this second installment. Only mysteries, impossible situations and a series of characters that orbit around it and of which we barely discover some details are noted.
On an aesthetic level, Terrifier 2 It also stands out from what has been seen before: it took six years for the film to see the light of day and there has been a great turnaround in regards to the visual approach. Almost nothing remains of the tropes that took us back to the past and we did find a greater formal perfection in the two and a half hours of footage.
In short, it is a film that shows ambition, that has a vocation for continuity and with which an effort has been made to raise the bar for quality in all aspects of production. A lot of meat has been put on the grill and the bet has been raised to leave the terrain of the B series and embrace a more solid concept and a longer journey.
“Everything is funny at the Clown Cafe”
Arguably, in principle, Terrifier 2 It’s a simple movie: Art returns to Miles County after inexplicably resurrecting and starts killing again, using the Halloween party to get away with impunity from the places where he commits his heinous crimes. For this he has equipped himself with a bag full of disturbing tools.
His new objective will be to hunt down Sienna and Jonathan, a teenager and her younger brother, who lost their father after he made a series of strange sketches in which Art appeared. The clown this time appears accompanied by a girl dressed like him with whom he seems to communicate despite the fact that no one but him can see her.
But it is also a sinister and rugged place like few others, the Clown Cafe, begins to creep into Sienna’s nightmares. And there’s some kind of sinister connection between her dreams and reality that she still can’t fathom…
As if he were a new and charismatic Freddy Krueger, the cruel and charismatic Art played by David Howard Thornton has a patina of paranormal overtones that make an appearance to induce us to imagine what his origin is.
As explicit as you’d expect (this sequel does stay true to itself in that), it features a gruesome new death to match that of the woman sawn in half while hanging upside down. This is the already famous “bedroom scene” and it is by its own right one of the grossest things we will see on the big screen.
In addition to enjoying a more polished production design and being clear about how he will continue to exploit this story, Damien Leone takes more steps forward opting for a series of characters that do not become simple minced meat.
Good play on the casting with the signing of the photogenic and talented Lauren LaVera who eats the camera and also has physical packaging to face the challenge of facing the lunatic murderer. In fact, his training in martial arts has allowed him to take charge of virtually every scene in the film.
In short, if you liked Terrifier, the second feature film is going to give you something more than gore and it is going to go off on a tangent on more than one occasion, because it is not a mere continuation, but a more complex proposal with future aspirations. Those with delicate stomachs will have a regular time… although they already know that! We are not leaving without recommending the interview in which Leone told us about Terrifier 3.