Terrifier
Terrifier is a 2016 American slasher film written, co-produced, and directed by Damien Leone. The film stars Jenna Kanell, Samantha Scaffidi, David Howard Thorton, and Catherine Corcoran, and follows the actions of a homicidal clown named Art, who terrorizes and kills victims in a decrepit apartment building on Halloween night. The film marks the second feature film appearance of the Art the Clown character, after Leone's 2013 anthology film All Hallows' Eve, which incorporated footage from previous short films that were also directed by Leone and featured the character.
Terrifier premiered at the Telluride Horror Show Film Festival in October 2016 before being picked up by Dread Central Presents and Epic Pictures for a limited theatrical release in March 2018.
Plot
Monica Brown, a talk show host, interviews a severely disfigured woman who is the sole survivor of a massacre that took place the previous Halloween. Brown mentions that the body of the killer, known only as "Art the Clown", disappeared from the morgue, suggesting that he is still alive. However, the disfigured woman insists that she saw him die. After the show, Monica insults the woman's appearance, after which the woman attacks Monica and gouges her eyes out.On Halloween night, two friends, Tara and Dawn, leave a Halloween party and drunkenly wander back to Dawn's car, where they notice a strange man in a clown costume. The man, Art the Clown, follows them into a nearby pizzeria. After a short time, the restaurant owner roughly escorts Art from the premises for smearing his own feces all over the bathroom walls. The girls discover that one of Dawn's car tires has been slashed, and Tara calls her sister Vicky to come pick them up. While waiting, Tara asks a pest control worker, Mike, if she can enter the derelict apartment building he's working in to use the restroom. Once inside, Tara encounters a deluded woman, who believes the doll she carries is her infant child. Art returns to the pizzeria, where he kills and mutilates the two workers before abducting Dawn.
Tara soon encounters Art inside the apartment building. He pursues her through the indoor mechanic's garage and stabs her with a scalpel. She tries to alert Mike but Art drugs her. Tara awakens bound to a chair, and Art reveals Dawn, suspended upside-down from the ceiling. He forces Tara to watch as he saws Dawn in half with a handsaw. Tara escapes but Art draws a handgun and shoots her to death. The Cat Lady witnesses this and begs Mike to call the police. Mike dismisses her as insane, but Art soon knocks him unconscious with a hammer. The Cat Lady discovers Art cradling her doll. In a plea for the return of her "child", she tries to show motherly compassion to Art by cradling him.
Vicky arrives to take Tara and Dawn home but is lured into the basement by Art. There, she discovers what she believes is an injured Tara, but it is actually Art, who has severely mutilated the Cat Lady and is wearing her scalp and breasts. Mike's co-worker arrives looking for him but is decapitated by Art. Vicky escapes Art but stops to grieve upon finding her sister's corpse. Art then attacks her with a makeshift cat o' nine tails, but Mike arrives suddenly and knocks Art unconscious. The two flee and call 9-1-1 but before they can escape, Art appears and kills Mike. Vicky retreats into a garage, and Art rams through the door with a pickup truck, causing further injury to Vicky. As she lies helplessly, Art begins to eat her face. Police arrive, but Art shoots himself in the head with a pistol before the officers can apprehend him.
Art's body is taken to a morgue, along with the bodies of his deceased victims. When the medical examiner unzips Art's body bag, Art reanimates and strangles him to death. One year later, Vicky is released from the hospital after rehabilitation from the injuries inflicted by Art; she is revealed to be the severely disfigured woman from the film's opening scene.
Cast
Production
The character of Art the Clown first appeared in the 2008 short film The 9th Circle, which Leone wrote and directed. Leone later wrote and directed a short film titled Terrifier, which featured Art and was released in 2011. These shorts were incorporated into the 2013 anthology film All Hallows' Eve, which marked both Art's first feature film appearance and Leone's feature directorial debut.In 2015, Leone launched a campaign on the crowdfunding website Indiegogo to finance Terrifier, a feature-length spin-off of All Hallows' Eve. After being notified of the Indiegogo campaign, filmmaker Phil Falcone provided the necessary funds for the project in exchange for a producer credit. In The 9th Circle, the short film Terrifier, and All Hallows' Eve, Art was played by Mike Giannelli, but in the feature film Terrifier, Art was portrayed by David Howard Thornton. Thornton was already familiar with All Hallows' Eve when he auditioned for the role of Art in Terrifier, and was cast in the role after improvising a kill scene in mime.
Release
Terrifier premiered at the Telluride Horror Show Film Festival in 2016. It was later screened at the Horror Channel FrightFest on October 28, 2017, and was subsequently picked up by Dread Central Presents and Epic Pictures for a limited 2018 release.Home media
Terrifier was released on DVD and Blu-ray by Dread Central on March 27, 2018. The release features audio commentary from Damien Leone and David H. Thorton, behind-the-scenes footage, an interview with star Jenna Kanell, deleted scenes, collectible reversible cover art, and several other bonus features.Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Terrifier holds an approval rating of 69% based on 13 reviews, and an average rating of 6.3/10.Anton Bitel of the British Film Institute described the film as a "subtext-free thrill-and-kill ride which openly advertises the sheer senselessness and gratuity of all its on-screen cat-and-mouse deaths by numbers" and "an unapologetically ‘pure’ genre entry, confronting – and amusing – us with all the sinister masked vicariousness of the Halloween spirit." Cody Hamman of Arrow in the Head awarded the film a score of 8/10, calling it "a very simple film, providing 84 minutes of stalking and slashing that occurs largely within the confines of one location. Leone directs the hell out of that simple scenario, though, milking every possible bit of tension from each moment. It's a thrilling, brutal, gory '80s throwback that I recommend checking out, especially if you have a fondness for the same decade of films that this movie obviously holds in high regard." Sol Harris of the magazine Starburst gave the film a score of 6/10, writing: "Presented as something of a throwback to horror B-movies of the '80s, Terrifier has far more style - both visually and audibly - than the average film of this nature. It's a surprisingly nice looking film for a movie about a clown chopping people into pieces."
The film was not without its detractors. Amyana Bartley of Film Inquiry.com felt that the film's script lacked both clear protagonists and depth, and wrote: "Art the Clown has the potential to be a formidable, gruesome, franchise horror character, he just needs more seasoning and cultivation." Felix Vasquez Jr. of Cinema Crazed called it "fairly mediocre slasher fare", stating that the film lacked any creativity and tension, also criticizing the film's storyline. Vasquez concluded his review by stating "As a film Terrifier aims high, but feels like a very disposable party favor you'll have forgotten once the credits roll."