Art The Clown (David Howard Thornton) might be one of the greatest slasher villains ever. Like, legit, this creation is something special for modern horror. He’s like a cross between Charlie Chaplin and Crazy Joe Davola; this murderous mime that shows more personality just through gestures and facial expressions than a lot of main characters in other horror films. And over the last several years, his creator Damien Leone has been slowly but surely building up this new face, from short films, to anthology wraparounds for short films, to starring in his own solo feature. A solo feature that turned out pretty damn good, all things considered, and with its follow-up on limited release in cinemas… hell yeah, I was going all-in with this. But even though there’s certainly a lot to like about it, I have to admit that I prefer the first film over this one.
First and foremost, this whole production is dripping in Halloween horror aesthetics, and it’s quite effective in that lane. For as full-on as the death scenes can get, there’s a consistent tone of absurdism to it all that keeps it from being mean-spirited in a displeasing way. Slashers like this tend to be mean-spirited by nature, but here, that’s more a reflection of the main killer than on the director themselves.
Beyond that, it also has a sizeable understanding of how much the macabre can appeal to certain people, especially during the Halloween season. Between young Jonathan (Elliott Fullam)’s fascination with Art The Clown and other notorious killers, and his big sister Sienna (Lauren LaVera) and the work she puts into her own costume, eventually turning into a surprisingly cool iteration of ‘clothes make the (wo)man’, it wholeheartedly embraces the spirit of the season.
And then there’s the gore. Alongside the refinement of Art’s special brand of sadistic slapstick, Damien Leone’s abilities with practical effects have only gotten better and better with each new film he’s worked on. And here, it results in some of the best gore effects of any film I’ve covered on here, period. When Art rips a man’s head open with his bare hands, or bludgeons a woman’s chest until it completely caves in on itself, or takes ‘just the tip’ to a whole new level, it is phenomenal(ly unsettling) just how realistic it looks.
However. As good as the effects work is, I wasn’t particularly invested in the ways in which it was used. Part of the reason why I’ve taken a liking to Art The Clown is that his approach to murder always felt like… well, art. Like he was treating human bodies like unformed lumps of clay that he kept hacking and slashing his way into until they became something else entirely; Sander Cohen would love this guy.
But while there’s a couple of creative moments here and there, like his personal spin on a Halloween candy bowl, a lot of the kills can feel really samey after a while. I grew up on Yoshihiro Nishimura films, where gore was used to show zombies playing golf with other zombies’ exploding heads, or bisected skulls turning into laser gun turrets, or sword fights using retractable butt katanas; here, it’s just hacking up limbs and pulling endless amounts of blood and guts out of people. For a film that’s been getting buzz over just how gratuitous its gore is, I expected something a little more impressive.
Then again, that might because the film tends to linger on such things for much longer than is necessary, and it’s here where I get to this film’s biggest problem: The pacing. The first feature-length Terrifier film was 86 minutes long. This sequel goes for over two hours, and it strains to make itself seem worthy of that length. The kill scenes, because they don’t show anything all that creative beyond just the volume of gore on display, end up blurring together after a while, and considering this is a film built on those moments, that’s not a good sign. But the same goes for the moments that don’t involve Art The Clown painting the town (and himself) red, as the attempts at drama here are quite sluggish and come packaged with things that seem to be important, but don’t really end up going anywhere significant.
Which is really a shame because, in terms of characterisation, this has some serious potential to it. A lot of it has to do with familial drama, like with the reactions from Sienna and Jonathan’s mother (Sarah Voigt), which are almost scary in how accurate and believable they are across the board. Hell, with the main conflict between Sienna and Art, it kinda becomes this duelling father-and-daughter story, with Sienna turning into a warrior angel as envisioned by her deceased father, and Art getting together with the Little Pale Girl (Amelie McLain) as his partner in bloodletting. There’s real poignancy to this, and it’s an interesting spin on the kind of gaslighting shit that crops up in these kinds of horror flicks… but again, not enough of that is fleshed out to fill in the rather extravagant run time. Even at its strongest, none of it ends up reaching the mindfrag melancholy of the crazy cat lady pleading with Art for her doll daughter’s life. Nor does it match the memorability of what Art ended up doing with that lady’s flesh, come to think of it.
I’m quite torn on this one. Art The Clown is as amazing as ever, Sienna stakes her claim for all-time great final girl with her performance and characterisation here, and the practical effects make for premium gorehound material. But its effectiveness is sapped over time by how drawn-out both the drama and the kills end up becoming, with an ‘epic’ story that could’ve been much more effective if it was concentrated down to the strongest elements. It shows some much-needed progression for Damien Leone’s approach to slasher films, moving away from how misogynistic his work can feel at times, but he still has a ways yet to go in terms of actually crafting a story for the screen.
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