The two girlfriends Tara and Dawn are leaving a Halloween party late at night, and stops by a pizza restaurant. After Dawn has taken her “longest piss ever”, a tall and skinny person dressed as a clown-like weirdo comes in with a trash-bag over his shoulders. He sits down by the table across them and gives them an intimidating stare, not uttering a single word. He starts to make faces and evil grins, which is creeping out Tara since she’s the one he’s showing most of his attention to. Dawn, who is slightly drunk and in a funny-mood, tries to laugh it off and plays along by taking a selfie with him. After all, it’s Halloween, so he must be a harmless weirdo who’s just trolling them (or in this case clowning them), right? Oh, well…
After Tara and Dawn have left, Art the Clown (which is the creepy clown’s name) returns to the restaurant to do some unfinished business in a pretty graphic killing scene, which gives us a foretaste of what to come. He chops a guy’s head off to make a Jack-O-Lantern of it, and another guy gets his fingers chopped off before he stabs both of his eyes out. Then Art is going after the two girls to get his brunette (Tara). And anyone that gets in his way gets killed, or executed, to put it more correctly.
“Terrifier” is written and directed by Damien Leone, and based on his short film with the same title from 2011. It is also a spinoff of his previous film “All Hallows Eve” (which I’ve not seen yet). His CV is mainly listing him as a special effects and make up artist, and “Terrifier” shows that he has a good eye and steady hand as a director as well. The film is a love-letter to the 80’s slasher films, with only practical and old school effects. And they are awesome. The death scenes are creative, juicy and gruesome, and even though there’s not much characters here, the actors are doing a good job. “Terrifier” is more a cat-and-mouse game filled with tension from start to finish.
But the man of the hour here is undoubtedly Art the Killer Clown.
In Ed Gein-style we get a scene where Art mutilates a girl while she’s hanging upside-down by her legs, and uses her upper torso as an outfit while he dances around like a drunk schizophrenic lunatic. David Howard Thornton is the actor behind Art the Clown, and he’s clearly having the time of his life playing this character with a high level of energy and enthusiasm. Art is also mute and plays only on facial expressions and body language, and David makes the character creepy and believable, and just a joy to watch. And in this never ending era of remakes and reboots it is a breath of fresh air to see a new slasher villain.
And some great news that broke recently: Terrifier 2, which will also be directed by Damien Leone and starring David as Art The Clown once more, is in pre-production and set to be released in 2020.
Director: Damien Leone
Country & year: USA, 2016
Actors: Jenna Kanell, Samantha Scaffidi, David Howard Thornton, Catherine Corcoran, Pooya Mohseni, Matt McAllister
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt4281724/
Sequels:
– Terrifier 2 (2022)
– Terrifier 3 (2024)
Dani and Christian, a young American couple, are at the brink of breaking up. Christian has already started planning a trip abroad with his friends and is more or less starting to walk out the door on the relationship, but after Dani experiences a horrible family tragedy where she loses her parents and sister in a murder-suicide, Christian can’t make himself break out. Months later, when Dani finds out about his planned trip to Sweden with his friends, she invites herself along with them. One of Christian’s friends, the Swede Pelle, brings them all to a traditional “Midsommar” celebration in a secluded area called “Harga”. All seem to be flowers and sunshine, until it becomes clear that they’ve ventured into a sect whose “traditions” proves to be rather disturbing.
Nicole is a young journalist eager to find out the truth in the case of an exorcism gone wrong in Romania, where a nun died and the priest and nuns involved were convicted for murder. She travels all the way over to Romania in order to dig deeper into the story, and after meeting with Father Anton and visiting the monastery where the exorcism took place, strange things start happening. As she finds out more and more about the nun that died, it becomes obvious to Nicole that something paranormal really did happen to that girl…and that it may even start happening to herself now.
Megan is an ex-cop that’s just gotten out of rehab, and struggles to get back on her feet again. She applies for a job working the graveyard shift at the morgue (yeah…not exactly the best place to be if you’re a previous drug addict and struggling with trauma). She gets the job, and soon thereafter the disfigured corpse of a girl arrives. It doesn’t take long until weird things start happening at the morgue, but Megan tries to convince herself it’s her frazzled mind that makes her see things. Until things become too real for her and she realizes there’s something very wrong with that corpse.
Brodie is a heavy metal-outcast whose meth-head mom is sent to a mental ward after trying to give a mall-santa a blowjob, and thus he needs to live with his uncle, aunt and cousin. They are “some good Christians”, by the way, who thinks Ricky Martin is the heaviest thing they’ve ever heard. Not much in common between him and them, in other words. His cousin is a complete sport-idiot-psychopathic douche who calls Brodie a “devil worshipper” and bullies him at school, but at least he’s got two friends at school who thinks playing board games at lunchtime is the most badass thing to do.
Mary, a new mother, gives birth to twins, but only one of them is alive. While taking care of her living child, Adam, she suspects that something, a supernatural entity, has chosen him and will stop at nothing to take him from her.
Berlin, 1977. A shitty place to be. A young, disturbed girl named Patricia (Chloë Grace Moretz) is on the run and seeking the doctor/prof/psychiatrist Klemperer. She’s in a state of psychosis and mumbles incoherent lines while she waves with her arms and then says in German “I was right. They are witches”. She then talks about the ballerina school she attended where she was a victim of abuse, and end the therapy session by saying (in German) “they will slaughter me and eat my cunt from the plate”. Yikes… We then get introduced to Susie (Dakota Fanning), a young, shy and naive American lady, who traveled to Berlin to attend this ballerina academy where she meets the strict dance instructor Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton). She settles in and has no idea what rabbithole she has gotten herself into. In the meantime Dr. Klemperer starts an investigation to take a closer look at what shady business is really going on in this academy.
Kyle Buckneil is a young, troubled lady who has been in and out of prison and rehabilitation programs without much success. After a failed attempt to blow up an ATM, and poor driving skills, it’s right back to the courtroom where she is sentenced to spend eight months of “house arrest” in her childhood home: an old victorian house in the country. With a bracelet around her ankle she can only stay within the property during those eight months, with her mother and stepfather, whom she does not have the best relationship with.
Dr. Louis Creed and his family have decided to move away from Boston and settle down in rural Maine in order to live a more quiet life, and give Louis more time with his family: Rachel, his wife, Ellie, his daughter, and Gage, his young son. Their new home seem to be peaceful and nice…except for the highway being located right outside where heavy trucks keep roaring by all the time. They soon discover a pet cemetery close by (where a lot of the pets have been victims of said trucks), where children have buried their beloved pets for a long time. The place holds a power that is by no means good, however, something the Creed family is about to discover in the most horrible way.
The Wilson family owns a vacation house near the beach in Santa Cruz. Adelaide, the wife in the family, had an experience at that beach when she was a little girl and has no desire at all to revisit the place. Her husband convinces her to go there, however, together with the Tyler family to have a good time. Things don’t go as well as planned for, and back at the vacation house that night things turn even worse. Four mysterious people dressed in red appears outside the house, breaking in and terrorizing them. What’s even worse, is that all of these strangers look exactly like themselves…