Terrifier 2 is a horror movie phenomenon thanks to Art the Clown

In Another Life, the horror movie horror 2 might have languished on a Walmart shelf, buried among other low-budget horrors that sport the “UNRATED” label on their packaging art like a badge of honor. Damien Leones crowdfunding 2018 original more terrible found an audience largely through its availability on streaming services. The sequel, which is currently in theaters, began a “limited event” release in over 700 American theaters via the type of distribution that typically handles film anniversary releases, live performances and sporting events.

but horror 2 slowly expanding its range. Its box office receipts continue to soar, as does the number of theaters willing to show a 138-minute unrated horror epic, buoyed by the kind of word-of-mouth marketing dreams are made of. Where other films like Paranormal Activity were once advertised through night vision footage of spectators jerking in their theater seats, horror 2 going viral Claims by moviegoers of fainting and/or vomiting at the atrocities of Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton), the film’s recurring sadistic slasher.

My own performance wasn’t that dramatic. I saw an elderly couple walk out after an extended bedroom mutilation scene, although I was also sitting in the same row as a group of teenage girls who were loud enough that it was obvious they were unimpressed. But Leone (who wrote the film, directed it, edited it, and designed those handy effects that blow the minds of some viewers) insists that the swoon reports aren’t just marketing plants. I’m inclined to believe him — the growth of the Terrifer franchise has been surprisingly organic since Art’s first brief appearance in Leone’s 2008 short The 9th circle to the latest movie.

Why did people choose Art the Clown as their memorable horror villain? look at him Played with rubber-faced ferocity by Thornton, Art stands out from a long history of killer clowns, in part because he’s actually a pantomime. (He signs his grisly work “Art the Clown,” though whether art or the audience is intended to tell the difference remains unclear.) His black-and-white design provides a stark, dynamic contrast to all the red he inevitably adopts himself, and his refusal to break his character and utter a sound contrasts the cruelty he wreaks – it’s the kind of violence that requires victims to speak out their pain.

But these distinctions don’t completely remove Art from people like his ancestors. You can tell Art to think far more obviously than you can read the unchanging mask of a Michael Myers or a Jason Voorhees, but he retains a similar sense of mystery and unknowable evil. Under Art’s costume with its tiny hat, no one can be felt, even when the gag begins early horror 2 reveals his nondescript human body as he tucks his bloodied clown suit through the laundry.

The appeal of Art the Clown lies in this simplicity. When we see him, we can immediately grasp his shenanigans. He plays on our culture’s fascination that pain is hidden under a whimsical mask, a compelling image that drives to smile, another surprise at the box office. More specifically, we can’t seem to get enough of the inherent irony of a good clown gone bad, be it Krusty the Clown’s harmless burnout The simpsons or the malicious evil of characters like the Joker or Pennywise.

In terms of personality, Art falls alongside the archetype of the cartoon trickster trying to annoy someone. Before violence ensues, he approaches potential victims while honking a small bike horn or wiggling his eyebrows with a big, wide grin. The utter banality of these images surprises the viewer, maybe even makes him laugh. He’s a brutal killer who’s not above torturing people the same way various cartoon animals tormented Elmer Fudd.

In Art’s first short film appearances (where he is played by Mike Giannelli), the comparison to cartoon chaos is even more obvious. Leone’s 2013 anthology All Saints Eve sews together three of his horror shorts, framed by a story in which a babysitter plays a mysterious VHS tape that the kids took away while they were playing trick-or-treating. The second segment, meanwhile, only shows Art’s face in a painting The 9th circle presents him as just one facet of a demonic cabal designed primarily to show off Leone’s homemade makeup and prosthetics.

But through the third film, the 2011 original more terrible In short, Art is a full blown Looney Tune who defies the laws of time and space. When a woman flees from him by speeding away in her car, she repeatedly overtakes him at the side of the road, as a mock hitchhiker making his way to the circus. Appropriately, the babysitter wraparound ends with Art crawling out of the TV.

For feature length more terrible, which was released on DVD and VOD in 2018, Leone is somewhat reclusive when it comes to the supernatural. Art could be a common human killer for much of the film as he weaves his way through a surprising number of people arriving at an abandoned warehouse in the middle of the night. Despite this, Art’s demeanor stays within the cartoon archetype, creating momentary contrasts with bursts of disturbing violence. Beyond the art itself, more terribleThe main selling point of is the sheer extremity of its squirting practical blood, which combines with Art’s inexplicable and over-the-top insanity to create an atmosphere of truly unnerving cruelty. He’s a fun character until he saws a woman in half after hanging her upside down so he can start from the bottom up.

As a result, viewers never cheer on art the way they tend to cheer on slasher villains after being detoxed over umpteen sequels. Some of Art’s sacrifices are written thinly, but never with the venom of suggesting they deserve the things that happen to them. (Although the first feature length more terrible is often accused of misogyny, particularly because of this graphic dichotomy.) If anything, Art is a bridge between horror characters acting like mascots and the new millennium horror era, where unrated DVD versions and torture porn thrived alongside found footage Movies and horror remakes like Alexandre Aja’s The hills have eyesthat desaturate the colors while increasing the violence.

In the pursuit of dark, grounded immediacy, mainstream horror filmmaking has largely supplanted the idea of ​​horror with a “funny” face. Perhaps the closest thing to a mascot-driven series is Saw, which nonetheless ties itself in knots to circumvent the fact that its signature villain, Jigsaw, died three films in a nine-film franchise (so far). Even previous horror films had started to ditch the idea of ​​an iconic villain. The generally entertaining, over-the-top Final Destination films resist putting a face to the menace that kills the protagonists – it’s just an anonymous form of fate setting in motion elaborate Rube Goldberg-esque accidents . And the Scream series focuses on a slasher persona that can be embraced by anyone.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that the first Art the Clown shorts technically date back to the murky era of extreme torture exploitation cinema. Art has only recently fully taken off, and that might be because it’s an anomaly in an era dominated by idiosyncratic, artistic, respectable versions of the horror genre. movies like The Babadook, midsummer, and It follows deserve praise for their restraint, their ability to refrain from lower fears, and their ability to focus their metaphors on grief, abuse, or insanity.

But while such slow-burning movies can be tense and intellectually fulfilling, they don’t always scratch the itch for visceral, knee-jerk thrills, cravings for something unapologetic, even downright sleazy. It’s something studios are beginning to rediscover as they slowly release unprestigious, de-elevated “fun” horror movies Malignant, barbarian, and to smilethat work more like roller coasters. But in the meantime, Art the Clown has emerged to fill the void by filling it with a truly absurd amount of blood.

The practical ramifications associated with that gore can be just as important as the villain spilling it all over the sets. When working with effects, Leone taps into the significant subset of horror audiences who are dissatisfied with the way CGI has taken over spectacle and adventure films and long for the days of effects made “in real”. In movies like more terrible and other prosthetic extravagances, like those of Steven Kostanski Psycho Goremanthe idea of ​​the believable is less important than the intriguing fascination of achieving something on camera and creating a kind of authentic physical presence that contrasts with the dominance of weightless CGI.

Acting as an entertainer, Art the Clown harnesses the artistry of a genre built on constantly improving through elaborate death scenes and detailed effects. more terrible doesn’t have the “You Are There” immediacy of a found footage film modeled after a snuff film. instead it creates a distance to the audience by positioning its violence as performative. It makes all this brutality more palatable than it would otherwise have been. In their handmade effects and their reference to cult slasher, the Terrifier Horror films allow horror fans to bask in the warm comfort of nostalgia while simultaneously playing on our latent need for the thrill of a movie that can pull the blood-soaked rug out from under our feet.