Terrifier (2011) Review
I didn’t really want to watch any of these movies at first (mainly because they looked, and sounded, like the kind of post-exploitation/torture porn I did my best to evade in the 2000s). However, I kept mostly seeing stuff from All Hallows Eve to the 2022 sequel appearing recently, which tempted me more and more as an honest horror moviegoer. And then I discovered that the 2016 movie was actually an adaptation of a 2011 short, so I figured “20 minutes? 2011? All right, I’m in”. The first few minutes are actually pretty good, being fairly well lit and not wasting any time in warning audiences what to expect with its over-the-top angle. And then, once we’re a quarter of its runtime in, the movie really goes for the 70s violence before cleverly fusing a darkly funny tone with the mayhem. It is very much aware it is insanely grotesque yet finds a way to combine that otherworldly tone with that same subtle yet unique humor (as Art the clown goes to crazy extremes all throughout) to match its pacing. This leading up to a finale that alone proves why it has grown so much as a genre perennial. Overall I can’t really say this does the worst job as a horror movie. I always kind of imagined the evolving antics Art the clown would be going for if he was to carry that same torch passed down by Jigsaw, Pinhead, and even Leatherface. But even as my expectations were met they were subverted in a manner that took me by surprise anyway on as many levels as they managed.