Save for a few issues, I’ve got to say that Damien Leone’s Terrifier 2 is the absolute slasher standard for modern times where one can quickly get desensitized to wanton violence and gore. I have never seen any slasher in horror history as brutal as Art The Clown. He won’t just slice and dice you, no. Art will literally fuck you up. He will smash you into walls, beat you with a whip (yes, even a child actor got beaten with a whip and I do mean brutally) drug you with a syringe, throw acid on you, there’s so many things. He even just takes out a machine gun and goes full mass shooter in one scene.
Unfortunately, Damien Leone needs to learn how to trim this shit down. No way did this need to be two hours and eighteen minutes long. No slasher in history needs to be that fucking long. Also, even though the film had posters from Metal Blade and Nuclear Blast GMBH, neither label could be arsed enough to put music from these bands in the film.
Additionally, how does one of the most brutal slashers I’ve ever seen end with fucking synthwave? As brutal and over the top as this film is, it ends with a basic synthwave piece. Like any bouncy synthwave that you’ve ever heard. This is disgraceful. There’s a Carnifex poster on the kid’s wall for crying out loud! I can’t stand Deathcore for the most part, but by God that fits better than what they used for the end of the film. There’s even a synthwave piece used in an important dramatic scene in the film that is definitely out of place. At no point during a major scene in a slasher film should I be hearing synthwave!
Synthwave goes with futuristic cyberpunk types of material. Like Cyberpunk 2077 and Altered Carbon, for example. This is why artists like Gunship and Carpenter Brut use that kind of aesthetic on their album covers. It does not, nor has ever gone with horror and slasher films. I don’t think I’m asking for too much here but “one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong.” That’s my biggest pet peeve with this entire film. Especially since none of it takes place in the eighties. I could give him leeway if it was like VHS 85 or Totally Killer. Those films can get by with an eighties aesthetic. Terrifier 2 however, does not take place in the eighties, so it cannot be put into the same category. They’re using cellphones, so that already disqualifies it as an “eighties throwback film.”
Despite all of this, I like the film because it shows more personality to Art The Clown. He’s actually been made to be funny, so instead of one-liners, he instead uses funny gestures. Even after the barbaric killing scenes and I do mean barbaric. These scenes are absolutely not for the feint of heart. Damien Leone goes above and beyond when it comes to the sheer torture of victims and interestingly enough, a great focus is put on destroying the faces of the many beautiful women in the film. The home invasion scene is by far the most realistic of these and goes into shocking amounts of gore that I have never seen before in a horror slasher.
The scene where he puts candy into the head and has the kids pick the candy out of it is just fucking brilliant. It’s sick, depraved and humorous all at the same time. I can understand completely why Damien Leone decided to go overboard with the killing scenes, because then they have impact. We’ve been kind of desensitized to regular slasher kills, which are usually quick and to the point. But by making me want to turn my head away, the film achieves a sense of terror that classic slasher villains just couldn’t achieve today.
We finally have to discuss The Pale Little Girl, who seems to be the key to Art’s constant rejuvenation. We’re given an after credits scene with Chris Jericho (and no Fozzy music appears in the film either, oddly enough) where we get a glimpse into how Art The Clown came to be. However, there’s something else rather odd about this character and it’s the fact that only some people seem to be able to see her.
The film uses a sword McGuffin, which apparently has magical powers and is the only way to kill Art The Clown. Yet, when the heroine finally uses it against him and severs his head, instead of going after The Pale Little Girl as anyone else would have, they decide to stand there and watch as the girl picks up his head as her eyes glow a bit, showing that she too has some kind of weird powers.
This all being said, the fact that Terrifier 3 will be a Christmas movie/Black Christmas knockoff is not exactly what I would consider the best idea to follow the lore established in the second film. Although the first film is almost not even necessary, the second film sets up so much that it would be an awful shame if all of the world and character building established in Terrifier 2 had just gotten thrown into Art’s garbage bag. Let us hope that’s not the case and that the mystical sword and The Pale Little Girl get further explained. Damien Leone had me on the hook for almost two and a half hours here, so I want to see more of this twisted little world he’s built.
The end of the first film thanked horror greats like Wes Craven and George Romero. Perhaps in time, Damien Leone will be just as synonymous with the world of horror. Time will tell, but I’d certainly consider this a step in the right direction.
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