Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) is resurrected and returns to Miles County in Terrifier 2, this time targeting a teenage girl and her younger brother during Halloween. Along the way, he joyfully kills many strangers and is obsessed with the evil of it all. It’s gore from start to finish with a little storyline sprinkled in, expanding on the first Terrifier film where we see Art chasing Tara Heyes (Jenna Kanell) around an abandoned building more so just for the thrill of the hunt.
“I’m excited for people to see the Sienna character because I’ve had that character in my head for about 10 years,” said director Damien Leone. “People have latched on to my villain. I wanted to see if I could maybe create a protagonist that they like as well. So, I’m excited. I’m really thrilled with what Lauren LaVera brought to the character. I think she’s so likable and vulnerable and charismatic and heroic. She brought such a layered performance to it.”
Terrifier 2 Wastes No Time
Terrifier 2 begins with Art covered in blood after murdering a man. He goes to a laundromat to clean himself up and while there, encounters Demon Girl (Georgia MacPhail), another evil entity that appears almost like family to him. Some characters can see Demon Girl, some characters cannot. He sits making silly faces with her while a man in the corner of the laundromat sleeps like a sitting duck. Before leaving, Art murders him, of course.
We’re then introduced to Sienna (Lauren LaVera) who has nightmares about Art. Her little brother Eric (Griffin Santopietro) wants to dress up as him for Halloween, antagonizing Sienna as she suspects her nightmares are more than just dreams. This is confirmed when they serve as a conduit to set a fire in her room, burning everything on her nightstand except for a dagger that her father left her before he died. It appears this dagger is magic and that’s why she and her brother are being targeted by Art.
“I knew going into this one that the supernatural element was going to be huge, and I wanted to not on-the-nose explain as to why he came back, but just let the audience know that there is this supernatural force guiding him on this mission to lead him to Sienna,” said Leone.
Sienna and Eric are being targeted because of a magical dagger, and the force that leads this “takes the form of this little girl,” explained Leone, referring to Demon Girl, “whether it’s a demon or the devil itself.”
Terrifier 2 is Filled with Gore
Art has his guiding force and targets, but he also needs to have fun. It seems that’s why he stalks Sienna for a while before fully taking her on, having gruesome scenes where he hacks away at her friends, Halloween store clerks, or really anyone with a heartbeat. These scenes can be uncomfortable to watch, though that’s likely what fans of the first Terrifier movie are expecting, and Terrifier 2 takes it to another level.
“There’s one scene in particular that I knew we were going to cover the entire room with blood. We actually built that set because I knew I couldn’t shoot that in somebody’s house. We would’ve just destroyed their property. That set is still standing in a barn, and it still looks exactly like we left it. I think there are still just bottles of blood sitting on the floor. I mean, we just ran out of there. We never wanted to look back… we shot it for two days, and we knew that it was going to be one of the big scenes, if not the biggest scene to sort of rival the hacksaw scene in part one. That’s what everyone was expecting us to do,” said Leone.
Art visibly has fun throughout these scenes, blending almost cartoonish elements into his murders, yet at some moments is dead serious depending on the circumstances, making him all the more frightening.
“There’s a lot of little Art the Clown things that we know we want to do, like little looks that he does or moments like that. But what I like to do is maybe one or two takes my way, and with someone like Dave, I like to have him just go and play and improvise and do all kinds of wacky things. What’s great is I think sometimes he’ll go way too far into a very cartoony play, but I could always reel him back in, maybe meet somewhere in the middle or something like that. And he’s very courageous, he’s got no problem going anywhere,” explained Leone. He continued, “Then there are times where I tell him to drop the whole clown shtick, I want you to be dead serious as if you’re not even dressed as a clown now, so it makes it even scarier, and you don’t really know what’s going on in his mind.”
Possibility for Terrifier 3
Terrifier 2 is a strong follow-up to the first that will without a doubt please its fans. There’s everything the first one had and more. The kill scenes are more horrific, there’s more of a story to follow, and the overall filmmaking is stronger. We also get a longer runtime, coming in at just over two hours.
“Right now as an artist, I’d like to tell a solid trilogy,” commented Leone on the possibility of doing another. “That way you can watch and feel fulfilled with a beginning, a middle, and an end and feel satisfied. Something you can walk away from and say, ‘I know what this was about. I know these characters, and there was a solid arc.’”
There is currently no confirmation for Terrifier 3, though to echo Leone’s sentiments, there certainly is plenty of story left to tell, and we’re interested to see how he and his team would take on the challenge of upping the gore to an even greater extreme once again.
Terrifier 2 will be in theaters on October 6, 2022, from Cinedigm in partnership with Icon Events.
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