It’s a surprisingly successful follow-up to “Terrifer,” a low-budget 2016 film that went under the radar at the time. Art the clown is resurrected in the morgue. One year after the massacre in the town of Miles, the sinister psycho returns to wreak havoc on a grieving family. This time the ones facing Art are a young man named Jonathan, who has a particular obsession with him, and his older sister Sienna, an artist with a fondness for cosplay. Her late father left them a book with prescient sketches about Art. To survive, Sienna will have to fully become that hero and face her antagonist in a world of dreams, fantasy, and legend.
It is one of the funniest horror movies of the year, a ride through the wild in which neither the plot nor the budget matter as much as the explosion of gore scenes, the way they are executed and the crescendo of blood and gore until the paroxysm of splatstick comedy. Its main character, Art the Clown, has been gaining notoriety in networks over the years, since his first appearance in the anthology film “All Hallows Eve” (2014) and then in “Terrifier”, but it is with this sequel that he has reached his peak popularity, spilling more blood than any slasher released on the big screen in recent memory.
The achievement of reaching a gross of 10 million dollars is impressive for a film with a budget of only 250,000. There’s a return to the Grindhouse spirit that goes beyond the use of violence, adding the almost surreal tone and maniacal performance of David Howard Thornton. There was something of that in the original film, but here director Damien Leone has tried to cross another red line with a sequel that expands the clown’s world, doubling down on his macabre humor to assimilate it on a campus where names like Michael Myers could be seen. , Jason Voorhees and Freddie Krueger.
The writer, director and also editor Damien Leone has devised twisted deaths with different ways of massacring bodies, which become really sick. He continues to show the murders in a leisurely manner, making use of long shots and close-ups, following the tradition of the Italian masters Bava, Argento and Fulci. We are therefore faced with what happens when the filmmaker is granted full freedom to pose body horror, cruelty and torture. The film is, as defined by stuntman Mike Flanagan, a 140-minute “megaslasher”. It also helps the experience that Lauren LaVera in the role of an excellent final girl and the score that Paul Wiley contributes with synths in the style of the 80s.
Genre: Horror
Origin: USA
Original Title: Terrifier 2
Year: 2022
Format: 2D
Duration: 2 hours, 18 min.
Qualification: Suitable for people over 16 years of age
Data sheet:
Screenplay and direction: Damien Leone
Production: Damien Leone, Phil Falcone, George Steuber, Michael Leavy, Steven Della Salla, Jason Leavy
Music: Rostislav Vaynshtok, Paul Wiley
Photography: George Steuber
Editing: Damien Leone
Distribution:
David Howard Thornton (Art the Clown), Sarah Voigt (Barbara Shaw), Lauren LaVera (Sienna Shaw), Elliott Fullam (Jonathan Shaw), Amelie McLain (The Little Pale Girl/Emily Crane), Chris Jericho (Burke), Kailey Hyman (Brooke), Casey Hartnett (Allie), Charlie McElveen (Jeff)