Shocktober 2024: Terrifier 2 (Damien Leone, 2022)

One of my favorite characters in the Scharpling & Wurster comedic universe is filmmaker Trent L. Strauss, a sleazy horror director (‘extreme cinema’, he insists) responsible for such reprehensible trash as Face Peelers 1-6, Entrails 2: The Gouging, The Hacksawist, You’re Soaking in Her, Pukeadelphia and The Tool Belt Killer. Strauss is all about shock value, doesn’t care about story or characters at all, and is only concerned with repulsing the audience, by employing the most perverted kind of gory violence imaginable. Like all the best Wurster characters, he combines a super-inflated ego with profound stupidity.

I feel like Trent L. Strauss could have made Terrifier 2. From its perfectly dumb title to its bare-bones story and one-dimensional antagonist Art the Clown — who in record time has become a horror icon, entry number three in the series comes out in a couple of weeks, kids can’t get enough of Art! — it’s very clear that auteur Damien Leone and co are primarily, and sometimes cynically, only interested in how gruesome, disgusting and realistic they can render Art’s deeds. All that remains, basically, are murderous set pieces. That was true in a sense in the slasher era of the 70’s and 80’s, which Leone seems most inspired by, but even freaks like Jason Vorhees or Freddy Krueger — the closest spiritual ‘relatives’ to Art — were given backstories that at least initially gave them some reason to act the way they do. Leone dispenses with the pretenses, skips most of the lore, and gives his audience the slop they want — excruciating, vile, sadistic scenes of dismemberment, flogging, stabbing and crushing. Not for the faint of heart. But is it art?

Emphatically not approved by Dr. Runtime — a splattery slasher movie that clocks in at 138 minutes is obviously completely unacceptable.