Film Review: Terrifier – 7/10

‘How can you eat a greasy croissant while you’re cutting up dead bodies?‘

Clowns are scary. We know this by now. We know this because of Pennywise the Dancing Clown. We know it because of John Wayne Gacy. Most of all, we know it because we can see it with our goddamn eyes. Just LOOK at them. Painted smiles and dead eyes. Hideous beasts. Writer/director Damien Leone also knows this, and that’s why, when given a modest budget to create something monstrous, he went straight to the circus…

Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) doesn’t even pretend to not be terrifying. He is a sadistic murderer and proud of it. Terrifier documents Art’s killing spree across a Halloween night with particular focus on his pursuit of Tara (Jenna Kanell), a young woman at the end of a long, boozy night out.

So yeah, the plot is pretty thin. What elevates Terrifier above your average horror B movie is Leone’s assured direction. The death scenes are graphic and imaginative, the kind of senseless violence that makes you wince and then laugh at the audacity of it all. Howard Thornton does a great job in bringing Art the Clown to life and deserves his shot bringing the character back for a sequel. The rest of the cast range from competent to pretty bad actually, but this is par for the course for a movie of this size.

Terrifier is better than it has any right to be. I await Damien Leone’s next project with interest…