Evil has many faces. Evil comes with many shapes and sizes. With so many choices for good horror it seems strange to always return to the creepy clown stereotype.
Clowns are indeed a creepy bunch, but are they truly that bad? The fear of clowns is called Coulrophobia, yet it affects a very small number of people. Most people don’t actually have a phobia for clowns, but are more so just unsettled by them. The famous serial killer John Wayne Gacy was properly the first person to put the fear of clowns into the public. Afterward the Stephen King’s IT would hit the shelves and become a bestseller, thus further strengthening the creepy clown stereotype. There have been a lot of B-movies where the clown is the killer, but most of them are relatively unknown.However, in 2016 a new creepy clown would hit the fringes of the horror movie audience. This one by the name of Art the Clown in the movie Terrifer. At the time of this writing there have been released 3 movies in the franchise and still counting. It is not a stretch to imagine it growing and growing in the same way saw did back in the day.
The appeal of Terrifier is simple and straightforward. The point is to show as much gore and blood as possible. Art the clown also has a very distinctive look and demeanor that is easy to recognize at a glance. The various insane kills can be shared easily through social media creating some curiosity about the film, which is also how I came to know of the film.
If you like that sort of thing then congratulations you will like this movie, if you hate all horror movies then you are going to hate this film. I am a horror movie fan and I found the movie to be absolutely dreadful. Now, I am not a fan of blood and gore at all, so maybe I should have stayed clear of the movie. I am of the opinion that a good movie is a good movie period! And that even movies in genres you don’t like can be good if made properly.
It might seem hard to say the film is bad when it does exactly what it sets out to and yes in that regard it is a success, but that is not the same as the movie having quality. There are no characters worth anything, no plot or set up to anything. All the characters are meatbags for Art to kill. This is in my opinion what is biggest problem with the film.
The slasher trope and why it matters
In the slasher movie the trope is to establish a group of young people who at some points encounter the slasher killer. Usually the group is young and horny and the girl who abstains from the pleasures of the flesh is the one left alive, the so-called “final girl” trope.
It is important to stress that movies off course don’t have to follow any kind of guideline or trope, but it is important to understand the tropes, what they do and why they become tropes, so you can skillfully break them later.
The final girl trope is good because you establish a main character who we want to see live. Halloween is effective because we want Jamie Lee Curtis to survive. By having a main character too rude for. We become more invested and the scary parts feel way more scary since we WANT to see her live. In Terrifier the characters are established and then killed off in a scene later, there is a vague idea of who we are supposed to follow, but we have no reason to care rather she lives or dies. The goal of the film thus becomes: how many different and fucked up ways can Art kill people. And the answer to that is a lot, but it makes for a shallow viewing experience. At one point who we believe to be the final girl is replaced and the role changes. This can work like in Psycho, but it is not easy to “change” the main character like that. There is a twist at the end regarding this new final girl and to be fair I did kind of like it. In fact it was the only thing I liked about the film.
The truth is Art is properly the main character. He is the one we follow, and he is the one the franchise is built up around. Again the point is not the characters, story or plot, or the filmmaking, it’s the core. At least Saw had something to say. This film seems like a sorry excuse for sadism.
Where the fuck are we?
In slasher films as in real estate location is key. Normally the slasher is loose at a remote geographical area. Like the street Jamie Lee Curties lives on in halloween, or Elm Street, or Bates motel, or crystal Lake. Terrifier takes place within an abandoned apartment complex where a delusional homeless woman who thinks a plastic doll is her child is just hanging around with the purpose of being creepy i guess.
Here is the thing. The location is not really a problem, it is not iconic or anything. It does feel a little random that the two girls just so happen to park where Art is and he in turn slashes their tires. It seems a little random. I guess the idea is that he planned for it all, but since Art has no voice lines we can’t really determine if he did plan it or not.
His plan was to go to a random pizza place where 2 girls just so happen to be. He would walk in to be creepy and to shit all over the place and in turn be removed from the premises. How would he know which car they were driving? Maybe it’s just stupid horror logic, but I can’t help but to feel like everything is a little too random.
Wait, he has a gun?!?!?
Art the Clown is a classic slasher villain. He uses a variety of different tools and weapons. Knives, hammers, saws, you name it. Classic stuff for a slasher. The one thing Art doesn’t have is physical strength, he struggles throughout the film with fighting the girls. At one point Art is being beaten by the main girl. She is hitting him with a piece of wood and he is lying on the floor. in a twist on the slasher genre Art pulls out a gun and straight up shoots the girl.
This is an attack on genre conventions if I ever saw one. The idea that a slasher killer would have a gun feels totally unexpected and a little cheap. It feels like Art is cheating; he breaks the convention on what is a normal slasher and it feels super bad to watch since it doesn’t feel like a deserved kill. This is, however, also kind of great. Art is making up for his lack of strength with a gun just in case this would happen. It is also so unexpected that I couldn’t help but to be a tiny bit impressed with the sheer surprise and shock. I don’t hope having a gun becomes something more horror films do since I do think it kills some of the tendons. It’s a trick you can use once.