Mad man’s mutterings: Terrifier two

 

A man man’s mutterings is a stream of conscious essay. basically a mental Brian  cleansing of a media subject. Subway or bad grammar bad spelling bad everything awaits  you

Cast:

David Howard Thornton: Art 

Lauren LaVera: Sienna Shaw 

Elliott Fullam: Jonathan‘s shaw

Sarah Voigt: Barbara

Kailey Hyman: Brooke

Casey Hartnett: Allie

Samantha Scaffidi as Victoria Heyes

Felissa Rose as Ms. Principe

Written in directed: Damien Leone 

Terrifier two is TOOO  MUCH.

That’s not to say I didn’t like it. to be honest I’d say it’s one of the better movies I’ve seen all year. Without a doubt in the top of the pops horror wise. 

It would be very easy to say Terrifier is just Mean for mean sake. It’s A nihilistic smorgasbord of violence and gore that will assault the most jaded sensibilities from the opening frame to the end credits. An Edge lord power fantasy that hates its characters loves its Target audience and revels in it sadism.

So, If you did think it was mean for mean  sake You’d be part right… I think? There’s a good chance that the text below will place a lot of subtext that is likely generated from my guilty conscience of enjoying such a gruesome endurance fest. 

Publicly it would appear that Director only intent is to reward his ever-growing fan base with the most crazy over the top horror film of all time. So while I may be wrong about his intent there is no doubt there is monomaniacal intent put into every frame.

every moment is executed with a unflinching detailed execution that can only be described as flawless. 

The way every shot is -

Every performance.

Every gore gag. 

The lighting

The score

The Edit. 

Every bit delivered with the stone cold intent of the executioner with his hand on the lever of an electric chair. Calculated and  shocking. 

Picking up were 2017’s terrorfier left off T’2 hits the ground running.

Circling back to the more obvious supernatural Elements of Arts first appearance in *directors* 2015 Awesome no budget anthology “All hallowes Eve” Art The Clowns third Cinematic rampage begins With The methodical stalking and gruesome blunging  of The Coroner who was unlucky enough to end up with The monster on his table at the end of the last film. 

My mysterious clowns Post police execution pre-autopsy resurrection was the only supernatural elements we saw in Terrifier, But we are all in this time around.

Our Antagonists otherworldly powers are on full display. 

Manipulation of dreams, Full on good fashion slasher immortality, a demonic GPS that leads him To his preselected Prey And A Whole trash bag full of Demented parlor tricks… The outlandishness that goes down in the mid credit stinger would make Freddie Brown his burnt bridges. 

He Displays so much Necromancy that you get the feeling he doesn’t need to Bash anyones brains in. He is clearly powerful enough that he doesn’t need to take the time to skin anyone or chew on a achilles’ heel, no.. I honestly suspect the brand of mayhem the clown Prince  of chaos performs on his chosen playthings is simply because he enjoys it. 

David Howard Thornton returns  as Art the Clown and if you were afraid of him last movie you may wanna skip this one. While his outlandish antics definitely put him in line with other post Freddy horror icons his violence is much more Henry portrait of a serial killer then Mrs. voorhees baby boy. Performance is so outrageous and alarming that it almost seems like his big smiling face is detached from the body that is committing such depraved … well ummm… Depravity.

To make matters worse Mr. Clown isn’t  alone. Ladies and gentlemen allow me to introduce you to “the Little Pale Girl” 

I’m not gonna talk much about her because

A) I don’t wanna ruin anything

B) she scares the fucking hell out of me. 

What I will say is  Amelie McLain brings The pale girl to life And  Amelie McLain is incredible. The design of the character and her performance are iconic. So simple so elegant and just what the series needed.

Mechanically she delivers a different kind of horror than The killer clown does. A delightful Mix of jump scares and just overall discomfort. They are the perfect team. The demonic duo are breaking you down with a mixture of legitimate terror and blunt force trauma. 

But… What the actual fuck… I knew I was going to see violence I didn’t wanna see but I didn’t know I was going to see a granny Nihtmare every time I closed my eyes. Fuck!!

ANYWAY

 Killings in this series initially appeared to be  random.  But this film points to A razor sharp method to the Grease paint  madness. 

T’2 (and I’m not calling it that by accident BT’Dubs)

Introduces us to  shaw

A very realistic Re person unit with a single mother at the end of a rope and seemingly atrocity obsessed son and A Teenage daughter, who may be the most realistic teenager in slasher history.  Lauren LaVera’s Sienna Shaw isn’t a OneNote central casting horror movie teen. She’s a real life teenage girl who lies to her mom hides a tattoo is smart naïve and a little bit nerdy. Most slashers that would be three thin characters wandering around waiting to get killed. But Sienna he’s a real life girl and LaVera’s performance flawlessly delivers a wide array of emotions and and contradictions which pull her the whole range of high school kid oldest sibling victim and finally superhero. She’s the best Final girl in a very long long time. 

Elliott Fullam’s Jonathan Shaw is a bit more cliché laden. Responsible for most of the mystery solving and an abundance of the exposition delivery Jonathan is every bit the monster kid that has populated slasher sequels forever. He’s the type of character who pops up every few installments to give the final girl trope a needed vacation. Jonathan‘s obsession with killers is a bit different than our typical Monster kid or awkward teen but he still looms very squarely in the shadow of Tommy Jarvis. 

Sarah Voigt plays Jonathan and Sienna's mother Barbara. When her husband died Barbara was left with the unenviable task of raising two kids who are more than a handful and much more than she understands. Against their strong personalities and the rose colored memories of her husband, she spends her time one poke away from her last exposed nerve, all the while unknowingly navigating the swirls duel defenders against a very malicious evil. She yells and swears and cries it’s all very real and reminds me of every mother who had to put up with me and my dumb friends. She’s great and I hope to see her in other stuff.

Sienna’s Best friends Brooke ( The typical party animal bad girl) and Ally (The seemingly more normal human) were not given A lot to work with but their friendship and proximity to a hero definitely gives a social evolution to who Sienna is and how they are friends. The trio is not unlike either iteration of Laurie strode‘s posse. Despite not being much more than easy pray for our monsters they are likable and relatable and it’s truly unpleasant to see the awful mess that befalls them.

All the mythology is delivered via hints left posthumously by their Fantasy loving artist father. The patriarch of The Shaw Family Developed a brain tumor which changed his mood and left him prone to at the time what seemed like delusion but plot would reveal as prophecy.

The implication being that the Shaw  children specifically Sienna Shaw may be the one thing that can stop Art and his diabolical sidekick… or herald.. or boss … or whatever the fuck that creepy clown kid is. But the nightmares Aren’t just waiting around unaware. They Cutting a path directly towards the Shaw kids. Brutally mowing down everyone in their circle and anyone else that happens to get in their way. 

Inevitable Showdown goes down appropriately enough in a old carnival. 

Let me digress for a second to speak of some of the kills and violence in general.

The little clever nuance is that many of the kills are heralded. 

A character who makes light of a famous person‘s disfigurement finds them self disfigured. The horn dog gets stabbed in the dingdong. someone mentioning Nazi syringe atrocities gets their own syringe situation and The most sympathetic normal ancillary character receives perhaps the worst death ever committed to Digital video. For real, I had to look away… for context I watch the night comes for us on lazy Saturday afternoons for entertainment. I’ve been watching horror movies my whole life I show Inside at parties and I was in a goddamn Bryan Paulin film… and I had to look away. It’s fucking awful almost unacceptable that’s when I fucking got it.. three films in and I got it. Since all hallows eve my relationship with Damien Leone But not on similar to Anna and Mademoiselle from 2008 mayters.  He has mentally beat me raw until I see.

I watch the last 45 minutes of martyrs with new eyes.

art the clown despite all of his outrageous trappings is the real version of the horror icons we have been fetishizing our whole Fandom. People don’t get stabbed wide in their eyes and then slip over - getting killed is long and gory work, full of screaming and bodily fluids. 

You’re not supposed to like art or the pale girl. Of course their brilliant design makes them ultra-marketable and intriguing but at the end of the day this is not the likable relatable marvel villain who could just as soon join the avengers as destroy the world. It’s not Freddy or Jason cartoonish kills bridge at times lean more towards Bugs Bunny or the Three Stooges then a real monster.

Art is a villan. Unrepentant evil without anything likable. He at times lures us close with relatable 80s slasher antics that when themselves to the motif of a clown., Exaggerative pantomiming miniature tricycles and the such.. it’s a trick it’s a trap (get an Ax) . None of these shenanigans are to lessen the blow there too long are you headlong into getting your wig cracked with a club garnished with knives forks and other sharp nasty edges.

Even though i’m fully aware of how crazy this statement makes me sound,  Art is the monster that all the other slashers are implied to be. Whether our favorites have been hamstrung by Hollywood marketing sensors or just out and out crappy writing, art is the real deal Holyfield hampered by none of his predecessors burdens. 

It’s no surprise that these two films happen on Halloween because they are the antithesis to John carpenters original Halloween film.

Managing to pull off the reality of the situation with incredible directing and building dread Carpenter not only delivered the first but perhaps the most realistic of all slashers.

On the flipside, *Directors last name* leaves nothing unstated and nothing on scene there is zero subtlety and even though his atrocious proxy WAAAY that’s realistic it somehow comes up as just as real if not more so.

In the slashers we grew up with a whole thing juggernaut will stab somebody, The victims eyes were wide in and then they slumped over. Sure will get a bunch of lopped off heads and other varieties of chaos, but that’s not how folks die. Like I said Killing is busy work and there’s usually a lot of “screaming and bodily fluids involved .”

So I’m Told… obviously I don’t know this by experience just..annn  educated guess….Moving on…

It may take even a super strong person a couple of chops to chop off a head.. or limb but even though we’ve been saying we want it more real looking we want it more gory I don’t know that we do. 

Terrifier two is a lot. A lot to take in a lot to stomach.

It’s possible subversively could be an indictment on the viewer. A visual penance for The years of unrealistic neutered cinematic carnage we’ve cheered on.

“ if you want blood we got it”

“We wanna see the aftermath not just quick glimpses”

Through its entire running time I felt like I shouldn’t be seeing some of it the violence was savage and not fun.

To put as concisely as I can Terrifier two is the slasher movie that people who don’t watch slasher movies think slasher movies Are like.  They have no idea that the slash movies of yore are for the most part team comparable chased roller coaster rides. Probably see worst on CSI whatever every single week. There are definitely things on walking dead or Stranger Things that out Friday the 13th most Friday the 13th by a lot.

But this is different this is a real villain not a cartoon character. Not a real person but a real villain. He’s not likable he’s not fun.

He’s a bully. A Misogynist. Deplorable disgusting thing that is somehow all the more human in his inhumanity. 

Art is Evil. And we’re being shown evil without the censorship without the candy coding without the eye towards toys and lunchboxes. 

Art and the pale girl are evil. And if Where they’re like this or put action figures of them on your desk you’re dressed and decorating in bad guys. Perhaps of the worst cinematic bad guys in a long long time. 

I can’t exactly explain why this film is both repulsive and refreshing but it 1000%.

From a filmmaking standpoint it’s a low budget triumph.

The special effects are without peer. Acting varies from great to passable. In the wild evocative mythology building has me chomping at the bit to learn more. It’s all these things that make it rise above idiotic Edgelord fair life human centipede or a Serbian film.

You can call me a baby for saying the violence is too much for me but it definitely triggered my empathy for imaginary people and that’s a triumph in itself. 

I think Terrifier two is a great movie.

It’s going to take a bit of gumption for me to sit through it again. but I suspect I will at some point… maybe … probably

But don’t take my trepidation as an indictment it’s an endorsement for those who are brave enough to view the Wish fulfillment promised but un given throughout a lifetime of Full color Fangoria‘s and schoolyard retelling of the latest luminous and flickering Kill scenes . This flick gives you everything your imagination was waiting for and about a mile more.