If you are of an age, surely you remember those moments of going to the video store and rummaging through the movies at the bottom of the horror section with the intention of discovering a hidden gem full of hemoglobin in abundance, murders of young people and with the minimum possible sense. Over the years, the slasher has changed, becoming less sadistic and more rational, and now it’s more difficult to come across these unscrupulous, low-budget slasher films with no greater intention than to make the user sick. public unaccustomed to a bloodbath. And then came ‘Terrifier’.
To kill, it’s two days
You have to appreciate the honesty of ‘Terrifier’, a film that never pretends to be anything other than what it is: the narrative of the slaughter of a psychopath in a clown costume who has really no interest in his main characters and only seeks surprise and shock in the viewer. He may not like his proposal, but at least He never lies or doubts about his intentions.
Said and done: before our eyes will be revealed dozens of burst skulls, gushing blood, guts, anguish and horror which, really, in the end end up being simple routine. What at first feels like a new and fresh festival of the most scatological gore that does not pay attention to the correctness or the fussiness of an audience more accustomed to the so-called “elevated terror”, in the end ends up being more like a check off list, from dismemberments to people split in half. Horror routine.
But there’s something about ‘Terrifier’ that makes it stand out. In a time of tributes to the slasher, of pretending through image modifications that we are looking at lost VHS from the 80s or imitations with more or less success, Damien Leone’s film genuinely has that look full of grain, grotesque visual effects and cursed tape Found at the bottom of a drawer. And most importantly: she does it without effort or intentions to pay tribute in a shameless way, as if it were part of her DNA. The dirt of ‘Terrifier’ is the only way for this movie to come to fruition.
The sequel sneaks in
Obviously, if I’m talking about ‘Terrifier’ it’s because ‘Terrifier 2’ exists, and its bombing in the United States was one of the strangest things of 2022, especially considering that, although it looks better than its prequel, it is still more of the same for (much) longer. Somehow, Art the clown has become an icon overnight as the cinema, accustomed to classic psychopaths such as Caracuero or Ghostface, had not seen for a long time.
Art speaks to our deepest fears: May our death serve as joy for the one who is killing us. In this case, as if it were Pennywise’s macabre brother, the clown represents the comedy of sadism in mime numbers that only he enjoys, exchanging balloons and cakes for grotesquely bloody situations, which sadly they lose effectiveness as the footage passes.
That does not mean that he is already one of the most important faces of the slasher film pantheon. His brazen attitude to mass murder, his weathered face and non-existent personality they make him even more terrifying than he should be: he doesn’t need a past or a context to be a killing machine. Just like a demon, he enjoys killing and makes it his lifestyle. And there’s nothing more terrifying than evil when it doesn’t have a reason.
And yet it doesn’t work
Despite Art’s charisma and the originality of (some) murders, ‘Terrifier’ It is not a good movie nor will it leave a mark on the slasher, unlike its sequel. And it is that his own sin is his penance: by creating somewhat unpleasant interchangeable characters pursued by a murderer without personality, past or motivation, the film loses steam very quickly. The viewer has no reason to want the death of some or the survival of others, and the myth of the mysterious killer with no past is lost after the first three murders.
The special effects are, within the low budget, incredible: an exquisite classic makeup job that will delight fans of the most extreme gore movies, but even there it doesn’t innovate enough to end up fascinated by its shots full of almost unlimited savagery. Yes, there are a couple of brutal set pieces, as disgusting as they are funnybut it is not worth the rest of the common places in which it does not stop falling continuously.
If you want to prepare before ‘Terrifier 2’ you can see the first one on Amazon Prime Video and Filmin, but Most likely, both this and ‘Halloween Eve’ will go down in history as mere curiosities at the bottom of the page. Nobody asks for excellent film quality from a slasher (which does not mean that they cannot give it), but they do ask for a little more variety, characters that are more than sketchy and a murderer who goes beyond grimaces and grotesque. ‘Terrifier’ simply ends up being more lazy than scary.