Terrifier (Damien Leone, 2016)

The killer clown cometh...

Terrifier is something special. It’s bizarre to say that about such a gnarly, twisted, brutally gory horror movie, but it really is.

Clearly, I’m not alone in thinking that as the sequel became an unexpected box office smash, the threequal brought Art the Clown into the mainstream consciousness, and an inevitable fourth movie in the franchise is forthcoming.

So what is it that makes this film so special?

On paper, there’s really not much to it: the plot is single-ply wafer thin (a psychopathic clown murders a bunch of girls trapped in an abandoned warehouse on Halloween night). But if you think that the filmmakers had no greater aspirations than to create a cheap nasty torture porn movie that appealed only to the lowest common denominator, well, you’d be dead wrong.

Terrifier is more than that.

The film is the next logical step for Leone’s creation (Art originally appeared in a short also named Terrifier, before that short was itself incorporated into the All Hallows’ Eve, a feature-length anthology of shorts all loosely connected by the presence of Art).

But with its opening sequence alone, it discreetly establishes that despite the small-scale of the bloody massacre in store, there is something greater at work here.

You see, the bookends of the film are set a year hence from the bulk of the action. We’re told in no uncertain terms that Art was killed last Halloween night and yet we see him very much alive and well. The sole survivor of his attack — now horribly disfigured — has apparently now also become a psychotic killer, almost as though the aimlessly murderous appetite of Art has spread to her like a virus.

Without asking any questions or attempting to explain anything of Art’s apparently supernatural pedigree, Leone establishes that there is some greater power at play here, making Art more than just a masked psychotic. He is the unkillable killing machine of so many slasher films before made flesh.

But Art transcends the expectations and assumptions we collectively have when it comes to such slasher villains. Whereas Michael or Jason are portrayed as invulnerable stoic killing machines, Art is very much the opposite. He gets hurt — numerous times. He isn’t emotionless — he takes giddy delight in the trauma he inflicts upon his victims.

And perhaps most strikingly he breaks the code of the slasher film — he uses a gun. This, inevitably, was a thorn of controversy for many, but I delighted in this unexpected twist. After all, why shouldn’t he use a gun? The whole point of Art is to kill. It makes perfect sense. And, of course, it affords much contemplation about the filmmaker’s intentions for the weapon’s inclusion as a potential critique of relatively bloodless pro-gun American action movies or indeed American gun-focused politics, neither of which I’ll delve into here beyond suggesting both are worth consideration.

But it’s not just action movies that are referenced here. It’s also the tradition of the clown in cinema, as the antics of Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Charlie Chaplin are all brought to mind while watching Art as he mimes his way through his killing spree, taking time to enjoy a joy ride on a tricycle or honk a horn at his cornered prey.

All of this, of course, is photographed in a uniquely beautiful way with dark shadows contrasting with vibrant pops of color, with a score that can only be described as Carpenter-esque.

It is a beautiful, brutal, horribly wonderful film.

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