TERRIFIER (2016)

Film: Horror movie ‘franchises’ are made or broken on how charismatic or how visually striking their antagonist is.

The Freddys, the Jasons, the Michaels, the Ghostfaces all rely on those two points. The victims, the ‘final girl’, the story are all secondary to how appealing the bad guy superstar is! The caveat to that is recasting some don’t always work… sorry, Jackie Earle Haley, but I think you know it’s true.

Terrifier, with its new superstar antagonist, Art the Clown, came out of the blocks racing at full tilt. Suckling on the teat of coulrophibia and doubling down on it with a creepy mime costume, and acting choices, Art slipped it to a space in cinema where the old franchises, except for Scream, were missing in action, and perhaps too old to be revitalised effectively anyway.

Maybe Art is the first of a new generation, and we’ll start to see some REALLY screwed up stuff.

Terrifier, along with its two sequels (to date) were written and directed by Damien Leone, who created Art the Clown (he’s more of a mime but you get what I mean) for his earlier film, All Hallows Eve, an anthology film from 2013.

Terrifier tells of party girls Tara (Jenna Kanell) and Dawn (Catherine Corcoran)… are these Buffy references…who by sheer bad luck meet Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) at a pizzeria they stop at on their way home from a Halloween party.

Art creeps them out by, well, just being a creepy guy in a clown costume, and is quickly kicked out after he defecates all over the walls of the restaurants bathroom, only to return after the young women leave to execute the two workers.

Tara and Dawn return to their car only to find a tyre slashed and call Tara’s sister, Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi) to come and pick them up as the spare was already in use.

Unfortunately for them, Art catches up with them before Victoria’s arrival, and then the gory night of terror REALLY begins.

I’m gonna start with the gore as it really is in your face and all looks practical. Leone a-pears to have come from a make up and special effects background and it’s generally good when those people end up directing as they can see how an effect can be done practically and not resort to substandard CGI. The only effects work I don’t really like was the make up on the nonsensical prologue that ties in with the ending.

On make up, Art the Clown is a terrifying looking thing. The actor is tall and lanky and knows how to manipulate his body so he looks like a combination of a preying mantis and Dhalsim from Street Fighter. His smile is an awful thing to behold also. Doug Jones would be impressed with his physical performance and his lanky, tendrilous body is a sight to behold.

The acting of the four females leads is pretty good, with Canell and Scaffidi being the highlights. The male characters just seem to act by seeing how loud they can yell at each other. Sure I get the script calls for that but at points it was borderline Kitchen Nightmares.

The locations are occasionally laughable as well. The morgue in the basement with what looks like Kaboodle kitchen cabinetry is laughable.

As for the script, well there isn’t really much story here: prologue, killer kills, kills again, and again, and then again, ending. As horror fans we shouldn’t expect more than that, especially from a smaller budgeted film, but the lack of depth was apparent. To Leone’s credit, he certainly is a horror fan judging by the tributes to other horror films thrown in here and there but this was gory over story every inch of the way, and if that’s want you want, something that doesn’t challenge you and just shows cool kills, you will probably dig this, but for me, I just needed a little more of a tale told.

I’m constantly criticising Hollywood for its lack of originality with its incessant need for remakes and sequels and stuff based on comics or books, and whilst I don’t think this is the cure, it’s a great start.

Extras: There is a decent amount of extras on this disc:

‘All Hallow’s Eve’ the Anthology Prequel Film: it’s a great joy when a director’s earlier film is an added extra, it’s even better when that film features the same character from the feature you just watched and even better when it’s a full length film and not just a ten minute short. Winning all round!

Behind the Scenes featurette is a badly films pile of behind the scenes footage but at least they show the final film of some of the bits so you know what part of the film it came from.

Interview with Jenna Kanell sees ‘Tara’ talk about her experiences with the film and her history with Leone.

Deleted scenes shows two scenes that would have made little difference to the film at all.

Dread Central presents Terrifier San Diego Crowd Response is what you would expect: a bunch of people who loved the film… of course they did, why would you showcase the people who hated it. A bit onanistic as these things usually are.

Art the Clown Time Lapse Makeup – it does NOT look like a fun application, but it was fun to see the transformation: I wish there had been a talk through of what was being done.

Finally, trailers for Terrifier and All Hallows Eve.

Film: 5/10

Extras: 9/10

Rewatchability: 8/10

This Umbrella Bluray release was purchased from JB Hifi