Terrifier 2 – 2022

If you liked Terrifier, you’re gonna like Terrifier 2 as well. Hands down, this is a brutal slasher. It has lots of gore and a whole lot of humor in it too. It’s kind of like Funny Games. Not that it comes up to those standards of social commentary. No, but the way the acting is carried out. Michael Haneke said about Funny Games that the perpetrators are playing in a comedy, whilst the victims are playing in a horror movie. It’s the same thing in Terrifier 2. Art the clown is in a comedy but his victims are in a horror movie. It’s even more obvious in this sequel than in the original movie I think.

Perhaps because there is a first movie to rely on, we already know the tone and the filmmaker can play a bit with it. It’s even spoken out loud that the mime of Art the Clown is a scary factor. And I would say that it is. He’s making practical jokes really. Practical jokes that end up getting people killed. He doesn’t speak or utter a sound but he still tells a story with his gestures. Compare this to Jason Voorhees for a while. We all know the silent character with a hockey mask to cover his face. It’s very effective. We get a character with a stone face and no emotions are let through. He just stands there and kills for no reason. No obvious reason at least.

Art the Clown

Art the Clown is similar but different. He has a motive for killing, kind of. And he sure has feelings. In his mind, he’s trying to be funny. But his jokes are so violent that people are scalped, lose limbs, and meet their maker in various violent ways. The gore is often over the top which is great for a slasher like this. It’s sometimes almost on par with a genuine splatter movie, but just almost. There are funny sequences regarding the gore but it remains pretty disturbing regardless of the humor. Does that make sense?

There are some things I don’t really understand in Terrifier 2. The same sequence that opened the first movie. The one where an interviewer interviews a survivor. That sequence is in this movie as well. That’s strange. Does this mean that this movie takes place before the first one? Does it mean that they take place on the same night? Maybe it doesn’t matter. You don’t see a movie like this for the great logic anyway. You see it for the kills and the gore, and there is plenty of it!

Chaotic

What makes this a bit chaotic as well, is that it uses mental illness as an ingredient. Not from the clown’s perspective, but from the victims. That means that we can’t really tell what’s really happening and what is just happening in the mind of the deranged victim. I think that’s the only explanation for how the scenes play out in this sequel. Something just wouldn’t be possible if they weren’t in someone’s mind, and not in reality. So, there’s mental illness, and there also seem to be some supernatural parts there. Designed to scare us I guess.

The pace is good, there’s no time to be a boring film even if it clocks in at almost 2 hours and 20 minutes. That’s epic for a slasher! I do think that the first was a bit creepier though. Terrifier 2 was more of a gore fest. A very entertaining gore fest though. I’m happy with it and since it’s already known that there will be a Terrifier 3, I can’t help but speculate how that would be possible based on how this played out in the end. But strange things have happened. They did revive Art the Clown for this one, didn’t they? Why shouldn’t they be able to do it again?