There is something confounding about the TERRIFIER franchise. Here, we have three movies made independently, in the way the director intended, and managing to speak to their audience while still maintaining their identity. With villain Art the Clown, we see a modern horror icon becoming an instant legend, and it’s a well-earned title. We are seeing a franchise that serves itself and its fans as equally as you can hope, and despite my hopes for it to wrap up in the third entry, it hasn’t worn out its welcome.
We’re three films in, and with a fourth on the way, and it’s still a novel and interesting franchise.
It certainly isn’t as if director Damien Leone is learning the ropes on these films, as he had made other work previously, but you can see him becoming more confident as a storyteller. While it can easily be said that the second and third films in the franchise are a little long, I admire that he’s willing to use that extra time to flesh out the characters. We’ve become accustomed to slasher films quickly introducing several teen stereotypes and then placing them in scenarios where they can be dispatched. Here, we are given characters that have the opportunity to reveal more about themselves, have multiple scenes, and give the actors the opportunity to grow them. Sure, many of them still die horrifically, but it has to feel a lot more rewarding to play someone who has a little more depth than just being killed because they broke a moral code.
And what of a code in the films? There is none, not with Art. Art is, similar to someone like Michael Myers, a force of malevolent nature. Unlike Michael, though, he has a path he is on, we just don’t always know it. He is a whirlwind of devastation that seems to have his own set of standards. Being silent forces actor David Howard Thornton to be very emotive and to use the tools he still has at hand. He embodies the antics of a clown, with exaggerated reactions and responses, and has a shade of the Joker in him, in that the best jokes in the world are the ones in which he is the only one laughing. He plays for an audience of one, himself. He is sadistic without being lewd. He is cruel, but only because it’s funny. He has more in common with Freddy in this regard, specifically in the elaborate pranks he sets up, which are often intended to kill people. Unlike Freddy, though, there is no revenge tour we know of. No, this is simple evil for the sake of evil. And better than his antics are when he goes stonefaced, and there is no reaction. That is when he is at his scariest.
At this point in the franchise, Art is only as good as his rival, and in this case, he has a great one. Laurn LaVera has done a great job bringing her heroine to life, and Leone has given her pathos and deep trauma that she must reckon with. It wasn’t until Laurie Strode and Sidney Prescott that we saw the emotional damage of living through this sort of horror really take its toll. In Sienna, we have a heroine who has gone through Hell and is still far from being out of it. She is not made out to be a sex-kitten and has far more to do than simply scream. She is a fleshed-out character struggling to find her place in this horror show that is unfolding around her.
It’s interesting to note that what isn’t shown is more powerful than what is. Sure, there is gore for days, and if you are squeamish, these movies have little to offer you. YET, there are scenes, especially in the third film, that could have gone too dark, and the movie knows when to stop just short. We see the aftermath of a few situations and know that some things happened, but there’s no need to show everything. That sense of restraint is surprising if you note some of the more revered kills in the franchise. I appreciate Leone’s ability to know when to say when, as it were.
Let’s not forget the lore of the films. If you look at the first movie, it’s a little more than a creepy movie about a crazy clown, yet there are seeds there that have borne fruit. The second film is utterly bugnuts and created a mythology that deepened the franchise and made it something more than “just another slasher franchise.” These movies are slashers, and nasty ones at that, but there’s more at work, also. By the end of the third film, we are given a lot of information, a lot of lore, and it appears that the fourth film will tie everything together in an epic bow. Will it work? I certainly hope so. It’s a hell of a swing. As much as I love the “Friday the 13th” films, I admit that they took very few wild swings and often played it safe. The “Terrifier” franchise wants to elevate how we see slasher films and is willing to get weird to do it.
I fully admit that the movies can start to get a bit much. They are overly long, and the whole of it could be trimmed down. And, in all honesty, the kills are to the point of fetishistic; they are so drawn out, yet I still find myself drawn and curious about the movies. I want to see if he can pull off an ending worthy of his monster.
It’s certainly my hope that the fourth film will wrap things up and put an end to this saga. My great fear with the movies is that they will overstay their welcome and Art will become a latter-day Freddy, where we’re too comfortable with him. It doesn’t have to be the utter end for Art, but I think wrapping up this storyline and letting Leone move on to other projects will be good for everyone. Then, someday, maybe Art can return to torment someone else and show us what awful tricks he still has up his sleeves. It’s easy to poo-poo these movies because of their gore and violence, but it’s what’s beneath that, and the fun with which Thornton is having, that is really worth watching. Every wild swing may not land, but it’s all been fascinating to watch and has pumped a lot of excitement into horror. Sure, we need movies like HEREDITARY to remind us that horror can be quiet and brooding, but we also need TERRIFIER to remind us that, at its core, horror is about the fear that someone, or something, is waiting for us in the dark.
…c…
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The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 