Hot on the heels of catching the first ‘Terrifier’ I decided to jump straight into ‘Terrifier 2’ to see if things picked up a bit and whether I could really properly understand why ‘Art the clown’ has slowly risen to ‘icon’ status over the past few years…And…well…things DO kind of improve a bit over the original, but in a cruel twist of fate, for every ‘win’ this film seems to deliver, it has a counter balance to drag it right on back to where it started.
This time around the film centers on a small family run by single mum Barbara, her kids Sienna and Jonathan are both fairly average highschoolers, but somethings not quite right with Jonanthan. He’s beginning to fall down the creepypasta/murder rabbit hole. And while most teenagers at this point in time WILL do that even if its just once or twice…Jonathans getting REALLY into it, and particularly into the story of ‘Art the Clown Killer’ who brutally murdered 9+ people last halloween and hasnt been heard of or seen since.
Both Barbara and Sienna try to curb Jonathans ‘habit’ but slowly it begins to get more and more intense, ultimately leading to Jonathan encountering Art the clown, and have having a very intense experience with him involving a dead possum.
The school report Jonathans increasingly erratic behaviour and eventually Sienna is pulled into Arts world, and begind to more and more intensly encounter the murderous clown leading to an encounter and final showdown between all involved….Oh! yeh, an thers a B-plot about Sienna trying to make some kind of Angel/Valkyrie costume in time for halloween because its based off one of her dead dads drawings…that seems to eat a lot of the runtime and doesnt explicitly lead anywhere that I could see other than giving her a cool costume with a little bit of meaning to fight Art in at the end.
I feel like Damien Leone took the wrong lessons from the first ‘Terrifier’ audiences were shocked and drawn to the gore, but a little let down by the one dimensional characters and near total lack of story. So what does he do to rectify this? He basically creates an hour and 50 plotline that runs in rings for most of the aforementioned hour and 50 plotline, which then ultimately transitions to 40 minutes of ‘two scared girls and a kid run around a complex, slowly getting attacked again’
It feels almost like a trolling attempt on the audience quite frankly. an hour and 50 of convoluted plot thats slow burn to the point that it VERY nearly made me bail on the film (and believe me, I dont walk out of movies where I can POSSIBLY help it). Only to essentially wind up in the EXACT same scenario that was the framing device for the first ‘Terrifier’ now just with an added kid and disturbing surreal visions.
The script? Hoo boy…the scripts runtime is 2 hours and 18 minutes long, and it feels easily twice that. This film has absolutely NO business being that long, its painfully long, criminally long. There’s slow burn cinema, and then theres watching a film Petrify in real time. Most of the runtime is made up by small insignificant moments that just happen to have a funny ‘Art the clown’ scene in them, the joke shop sequence when Sienna goes to buy a pair of angel wings is torture to me to sit through.
This film should have been about an hour and 40…an hour 45 AT MOST. And im honestly baffled that this was released in the form that it was, because I cant think of a bigger turnoff to me than a movie that I KNOW isnt going to be worth parking my ass in front of the couch for 2+ hours BEING 2+ hours long.
And thats not even mentioning the issues I have with the continuity of this films world. I mentioned in my ‘Terrifier’ review that the big problem I have with ‘Art’ is how the character is defined and what he does. when you want to create a mysterious character, you have to give the audience a few breadcrumbs to help them understand WHY they need to fear this character, and then keep that characters origins and understandings as limited a possible. Charactes like ‘Pinhead’ and ‘Freddy Kruger’ THRIVED on giving the audience enough to know WHY they should fear them, but not enough to make them boring or too well understood (sequels unfortunately reduce this impact significantly.)
The problem with Art is, they havent really established WHO or WHAT he is, nor have they really established any kind of idea of WHY he is the way he is. Art simultaineously is ‘just a guy in a clown suit who brutally murders people’ but he’s also some kind of ‘cosmic horror demi-beast’ he can be a physical person everyone can see, or he can be a figure that only one specific person can see. He can seemingly influence when people have a problem with him…But he can also drag a dead possum around a school with a small child dressed like him without being picked up on any security cameras or on site staff.
And it can be infuriating, because without defining to the audience What Art even is, even if his motivations for killing people boil down to ‘He just likes killing people’ it leaves me asking the question ‘why should I care?’ why should I care or invest my time into this character when the film makers cant even be arsed to define what he is/isnt and what he can/cant do within this universe.
I also didnt much appreciate (and very mild spoilers here) how they clunkily tried to weave in the first film BACK into this one. reintroducing a couple of characters in a couple of scenes TOTALLY seperate from the story being told for no real reason other than to make the audience aware that the two films happened in the same universe, and for a particularly surreal gross out post credits sequence. I can understand a passing line or two referencing the first film. But like; the pull entire characters back into this film for no reason. and they eat up a good 5-10 minutes of this films runtime…for NO reason. I didnt get it.
That being said, there are some elements that this films script does improve on the original. The characters do feel a bit more fleshed out, they do have a more interesting story than the original cast members (albeit I really wish they’d condensed that down to something more tolerably watchable) Art the Clown himself DOES get a couple of additional lore pieces that DOES ever so slightly add to his history. I think the beginnings of the shift into out and out Horror Comedy here do add an extra playful dynamic to the film, and the bleakness of that comedy is a welcome compliment to the total and utter violence we see on screen.
I guess, where I sit with this one really script wise is that it has some good ideas, some decent bones are here. Its just completely drowned out by the needlessly long runtime and total inconsistency on scene structuring. we’re bordering once again in the realm of ‘stuff is just happening with no rhyme or reason…just go with it’ and while that may work for a one off film. I dont want to sit through 2 hours of the director just cinematically telling me to ‘trust him’ only to then not deliver.
The directions about on a par with the first film. I didnt particularly notice anything creatively I disliked, but they seem to have traded a rather beige viewing experience that was the first film, in for a neon soaked 80s-ified aesthetic instead. which, at this point in time, is about the 2nd most generic thing you can do with a horror film barring what they did with the first film. I dunno, this films directoral creative identity is just kind of ‘one size fits all’ generic to me. There were maybe 2-3 scenes that made me actually sit up and go ‘Ooh…now thats a bit different!’ before we quickly found ourselves back in the sludge.
Thats not to say scenes are particularly BADLY handled though, most sequences are competently put together and the direction of the cast is an improvement over the last entry. its just not a big enough improvment to be out and out GOOD. I just kind of sat there taking in a total loss of atmosphere wondering how something like this could have been as successful as it was given it really has no voice, nothing particularly to say other than a pithy throwaway b-plot about the power of family love.
DIrection of the cast is also improved over the original, in the first film, most cast direction notes just seemed to be ‘run over there, breath heavy and scream on cue.’ here, we actually have characters with a little bit more depth, and theres a lot LOT more of them, and they DO actually get to do some semi-decent bits and pieces here, they seem to have a keen guidence on where their cues are and their motivations for the scenes. they wernt oscar winning by any stretch. But I found it more tolerable than the first entry. I just wish they’d picked actresses who looked slightly more different from each other, as theres about 6 actresses in this thing who all look kind of similar and it made it difficult to keep track of exactly who was who, where they were and what was going on with them.
The cine is about the same as the first film quality wise, there are a few more interesting shot choices here over the first film (largely due to a slightly higher budget) but, for the most part its the same stuff from the first film style wise, just trading in neon over desaturates. What I DID appreciate very much with this film is that it looks like the censors were MUCH more forgiving on the gore shots in this film. as, for the most part, rather than cutting away or prematurely ending the scene just as the gore was getting started. This film dives head first in and seemingly has a real fixation with Eye torture and scalping…
I also very much welcome the use of practical effects, with digital work coming in more to smooth over the cracks than anything else. I do feel the practical effects here are a *little* ropey compared to other films efforts. But I applaud the full use of it where possible non the less.
The edit, still isnt all that great, I found the colour correction distracting, and the sequence building is a little all over the place. Because they havent defined what Art can and cant do, it makes sequence building very difficult, your trying to tell a story where one of the main characters simultaineously is a flesh and blood killer, but also the figment of a childs imagination. Its going to be a struggle. I feel they did the best they could, but there was absolutely a lot of this movie that should have stayed on the cutting room floor, and I feel like some of the sequences would have benefitted from one more pass through to really nail EXACTLY what those scenes were trying to say.
Performance wise….look, this is a slasher movie that is predominantly trading on excessive and violent gore shots, where it feels like the writer/director has forced himself to write a story he didnt want to do because audiences demanded a bit more substance. The casts performances here HAD the opportunity to really help tilt this series into something a bit more substansive and interesting. Unfortunately, most of the performances here feel like TV movie of the week quasi-hallmark fodder. they’re generic, stiff, not particularly believable, and until we end up back in Leones stomping ground of ‘Terrified girls running around a warehouse’ the performances dont really do all that much. When we DO get to the closing 30-40 minutes, the tone shifts a bit and things DO pick up, particularly with Lauren Lavera as Sienna, who spends most of the film being a fairly dry and uninteresting character until that final act where she finally gets a decent chunk of meat thrown her way which she relishes. Ultimately delivering a solid performance in my opinion.
Of course, the best performance in this film, and really one of the ONLY reasons to watch this film is David Howard Thornton as Art the Clown. Delivering a second turn as the murderous cannibal clown that was, if anything, even more enjoyable than his first outing. he’s even more animate, give a much better physical performance here and being able to work more with the surrounding cast (and his child underling) gives him new depths of range to work with, which he grabs with vigour. There were points in this film where, quite genuinely, he was the only reason I was still watching. Though, quite how long ‘Art’ as a character will be able to maintain that attention past this sequel given the limitations of the character and the fact it felt a little repetitious in places for me already, has me concerned for whether ‘Terrifier 3’ will really have much legs beyond its theatrical run. That and with Leone saying he thinks the series will probably get to *At least* ‘Terrifier 5’ has me frankly concerned.
The soundtrack, once again, is totally neglegable. a screechy, bland, stock modern horror score, that literally did nothing for me. I have no notes. it did the job of scoring a horror film just about fine, it didnt feel like it scored THIS horror film particularly well at all.
‘Terrifier 2’ left me with mixed feelings honestly, While I applaud some solid performances, the reintroduction of some genuinely gnarley at times gore and some decent plot elements that continue to explore this world. The films ultimately too long and too messy for me to really enjoy. I honestly dont believe a slasher movie should break 2 hours if it hasnt got something significant to say, and I dont believe ‘Terrifier 2’ does. If you enjoy these films, more power to you. The frustrating thing for me is I CAN see a good movie in this, I can see an entry being made that DOES tick all the boxes for what I want out of this kind of movie. But this felt too undercooked for me. I cant recommend it ultimately, but I hope that things do continue to improve with this series, as I can see the potential there.
source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/terrifier-2/
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