Just one of *many* tweets that went viral during its release cycle

I had never heard of Terrifier 2 or it’s previous films until a couple weeks after it’s theatrical debut. A buddy /and at the time coworker/ of mine comes up to me and tells me I “gotta watch Terrifier 2.” A few months prior I had told him about my recent watching and subsequent review of Guinea Pig 2 which is why he felt more than sure I could handle Terrifier 2. That was kinda it’s whole shtick so to speak, accounts of people throwing up and leaving the movie mid showing or passing out cold all spread virally across social media. That was enough for me to be interested and dying to see it, after all another friend of mine was annoyed we missed our chance to see Crimes of the Future in theaters because: “… that’s probably the closest to mainstream sort of exploitation films that we probably ever going to have seen since like human centipede…I guess probably gore flick is more accurate that said I feel like that would’ve been a good experience to Make an article about.” So hearing that Terrifier 2 was not only making people straight up leave the movie or pass out I was more than curious given that not only is this in theaters but unlike Crimes of the Future this isn’t a limited release, this was truly mainstream. Hyped for potentially a great time I sat down and watched Terrifier 1 in preparation and I never watched Terrifier 2, not until just a week ago. Sorry about that one Desmond.

Bonus Review Lighting Round

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Bonus Review Lighting Round ⚡️

Terrifier 1 /2016/

So it’s been a hot oh idk almost a year since I seen Terrifier but thankfully /in this case/ the plot is not much to recount and is mostly a slash-fest, Movie opens on a new broadcast between a new anchor named Monica and someone who she claims is the sole survivor of the Miles county massacre. They identify the attacker as Art the clown And the survivor claims to have seen him die. simple enough except for when Art then breaks the TV screen he was watching this interview on before suiting up for the massacre that he supposedly already did based on the opening. This is the first albeit ignorable instances of “supernatural” dealings with Art’s whole...existence, After our first taste of the movies violence we start an excruciating build up of following Tara and Dawn on Halloween night and in their wake Art follows and causes untold mayhem truly worthy of being called a massacre. At the end Art, after being confronted by police, shoots himself in the face infront of the cops and Vicky, Tara’s sister whos introduced halfway into the movie, it can then be put together that it was Vicky who was being interviewed at the beginning and more importantly Art somehow comes back alive in the coroners office and choking him to death before the movie comes to a close. A sweet, plot devoid grindhouse flick timing in at 1h25m. Best kill by far was dawn being sawed in half while being hung upside down naked, I’ll touch on it more later but the kills really are something to behold.

Bonus Review is OVER

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Bonus Review is OVER ❌

Back to the show

Terrifier 2 does what terrifier before it did best, and does what it did bad even worse in my opinion. A slasher’s greatest sin is having a plot worth caring about, even greater if it’s plot takes away from the enjoyment of the downtime. On the surface I don’t think terrifier 2’s story is necessarily bad, rather I think it suffers from one real annoying prick in it’s side.

Fuck this kid

I can not explain how much i fucking hate jonathan

Like seriously god fucking damnit I hate this kid so much

Don’t get me wrong, I think for some people Jonathan and Sienna’s story as siblings who ebb and flow through being at odds with one another to helping each other can be a sweet and almost human experience to latch onto during the movie. But I can seriously say that every scene he was in was insufferable to watch. Voice cracks, being constantly in that “sheep who cries wolf” blame game about Art and the Demon/little pale girl. it all culminates in this god awful anchor that sinks the movie as a whole for me in place. I don’t think Sienna’s journey would work the way it does without him but I also don’t really care for that journey in of itself, but we’ll get there in due time. Enough about Jonathan, and to sprinkle a bit of positivity, his actor did a great job playing him, I don’t wanna make this out as a Jake Lloyd situation ala phantom Menace, he did a great job in the role, I just felt the character he played was an unnecessary aspect of the movie.

So what does Terrifier 2 do well?

It does what the original Did best

Good old fashioned practical effects

*God they don’t wet them up like they used to.*

I’m a sucker for good practical effects. Any good gorehound should be, it can’t look as close to the real thing if it’s all Computer generated bullshit. Both the 2016 movie and it’s sequel are fresh breaths of air in horror with it’s just sheer amount of practical effects. Making full sized body dummies, like the one pictured above, is not a new feat for the terrifier teams, as previously mentioned my favorite kill in the first movie was when they used practical effects to have Art kill off Dawn by sawing her in half from groin to head with a hacksaw, and we see this again in the /again most iconic kill from the movie/ scene where Art kills Allie in her own bedroom after being torn limb from limb and just decimated. As the team didn’t really know how to do animatronics, they had a whole crew under the set controlling the corpse as a puppet which means we can get to count this as a...

WET PUPPET!!!

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WET PUPPET!!! 🩸

Honestly every kill in some way or form hits about as hard as nearly any kill did in the original, which isn’t the easiest feat to accomplish especially in a longer and more kill packed /technically/ movie. Even it’s weakest kills in terms of weight or shock, which in my opinion is the dream sequence overall, its sheer amount of blood spilled makes up for it’s less than gripping viscera. Most of that viscera was saved for the infamous Bedroom scene with Allie’s kill.

And now for parts that mostly just...left me hanging

I don’t think by any means supernatural elements in slashers are bad, look at the storied history of Friday the 13th’s long run of sequels where Jason Voorhees is resurrected, technically a zombie, sent to hell and back and even was in space, supernatural or even sci-fi elements have always been in slashers. That being said you really have to just turn your brain off when it comes to this one. From characters who appear to just be human having full on scenes of magical/supernatural resurrection, to characters being ambiguous on whether or not they are even real or not, to the after credits Birthing scene where Vicky from the last movie is now pregnant with Art the clowns head and also might be possessed by the same entity that was controlling or was the little pale girl /based on the eye glow effect./ Terrifier 2 is chalk full of unexplained, and at times just hard to wrap your head around moments that’ll make you question how much you’re watching is subtext or full on text.

closing thoughts...

I know I’ve been fairly critical of Terifier 2, this review wasn’t very kind to it but let it be known that I did like this movie, I did enjoy my time with it /aside from Jonathan/ and will be looking forward to the already in production Terrifier 3. If this series goes on to follow Sienna, which is likely to be the case given how writer and director Damien Leone has said in an interview "She is my favorite character I have ever written...” then I will temper my expectations for a truly bare bones bloodbath, and instead will welcome an epic follow-up to 2022’s Terrifier 2. Will we get origins on Art? was Art all along Sienna’s father? Why did Sienna’s father have drawings of the massacre long before it happened? And what is up with that sword? Terrifier 2 asked a lot of possible questions and basically answered none. Truth be told I don’t know if I really want those answers lest we stray even further from the roots of the first movie. But with that all said...

>return?

Terrifier 2 - Splatter/Fun/House