Edit (3/28/2021): When I originally wrote the review for this, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Naturally, after exploring a lot more about Art the Clown and Terrifier, I am hooked and MUST update the Monster & Movie Review as follows:
Movie Review: 10/10
A fantastic slasher that upgrades the genre with a new funny face.
Monster Review: 10/10
Because he’s Art. Duh.
Originally published Dec 1, 2019:
Today we’re gonna be talking about Terrifer (2016), that Netflix movie that’s been sitting there for months terrorizing me and my fiancé while we skipped past it to find something else to watch.
But today, (12/1/2019) we finally took the plunge.
What we saw was a movie of funny and equally disturbing visuals, prancing in the shadow of Scream, and is a sequel to Damien Leone’s All Hallow’s Eve (2013) which is now available on Prime.
Now, I just learned that Terrifer was a sequel, and I may watch the first movie somewhere down the line.
But moving on to Terrifier:
My first thought while watching was that the clown was, yes, visually creepy, but we got no backstory, no explanation for why he does what he does, just that he’s there—and killing everyone.
When I say not a person escaped this man’s blade or bone saw or gun, I mean it.
There was a point in the movie where I got kind of disgusted at one particular death and I thought that would be the end of it (I didn’t check the run time before we clicked on it), but, no, it kept going.
And the deaths got more…equally odd and funny and brutal.
I won’t spoil it as this is classified as a slasher film (something I didn’t think about while watching it), so like the Screams and Halloweens of before, you can pretty much expect (unlike me) to know what it’s gonna be about before you go into it.
There’s no analysis I can do on the movie, itself, besides mention that what I once thought was a man character, took on seemingly impossible feats throughout the movie that only become more pronounced toward the movie’s end. This made for, once the credits rolled, some nodding and ‘ohhh’s’ from me, as I realized what we had just seen was not a typical crazed man in a clown costume terrorizing young women, but a possibly supernatural figure that simply can’t be killed.
And that’s okay. That’s what slashers are made for. I just wasn’t sure if this slasher quite did it for me.
Monster Rating: 6/10, because he was funny at times. Otherwise: 4/10
The Monster: The silent killer Art, the Clown.