Terrifier (2016)

His lack of empathy lacks empathy

By: JWBM

This killer-clown-on-the-loose horror film feels more surreal than based in any reality you have experienced. It is a wet fantasy for all the villains out there: from the target-practice victims, to the gory, right-up-in-your-eyeballs shots of when blood and flesh intertwine into its own morbidly creative sideshow. If you ever had any venomous—I mean, RAGING—hate towards bug exterminators, New York pizza makers, or pretty young mini skirts out on the town, then this is a blessing in disguise for that cruel and sadistic side you have hopefully suppressed by this point in life. Heck, even the poor, unsuspecting toilet got its comeuppance if that lends credence. 

The kills are as savage as trying to cut a straight line through burnt toast with your left hand in a cast while using a twenty-pound-too-heavy soup ladle. Any old school gore hound will get their rocks off in that department no doubt. However, any logical movie-goer might give an out loud "What a minute!" when the victims are lured like a Bob Barker "Come on down!" welcome for a rodent into a mouse trap. What does help are the moody settings that rapidly grow sicker and more desperate. Giving off that desolate feeling of the last meat ball that was so full of life till it fell helplessly trapped in between the counter and refrigerator; now cold and soiled, and ready to be senselessly toyed with by something else more fiendish and predatory. 

Our maniac clown—who brushes his teeth with a jagged broom stick slathered in the tears of your suffering—is silently playful and oozing with sinister surprises that could make even the most stoic Greek flinch. Right when you think he's let his guard down... BAM!... a grinning Jack-in-the-box comes a swingin' till the last brain cell is smashed—tethering on obliterated. It gives a leaning-closer-to-the-screen feeling of which direction the carnival-like show on the modern streets is headed next. The filmmakers prime focus here was setting up a foul mood, grabbing your attention by the collar with both hands with their new horror icon, and simultaneously attempting to toss your breakfast, lunch, and dinner with a mixed bag of gore effects. 

What makes "Art the Clown" effective is he becomes a 'What if' contrast to your typical masked bad guy who would boringly look the part with a single, predictable agenda. "Give me your money, or I'll shoot" sounds about as tame as sipping water behind locked doors on a Sunday afternoon compared to what the viewer is in store for here. The climax of certain scenes are about as memorable as taking a smoldering hot brand to the frontal lobe. However, you can noticeably tell that the acting, dialogue, or any shred of backdrop story as to how these people came together had amnesia.

Besides surface tensions, there is nothing to read in between the lines about with "Terrifier." This can either distance some to shrug and move on, or cause others to elaborate on the drive home for themselves the whos, whats, or why-in-the-hells leading up to. To be fair, that pretty much sums up every other slasher from the '80s with punishment in the form of a blunt or sharp object that conveniently collides with cardboard cut-out meat bags ready for the slaughter. 

"Terrifier" was never the whole package you'd want to take home to mom, but it does manage to go beyond certain personality traits that may be admirable in, say, the stone age with its knack for casual violence that gets the job done... and then some. You can count on our boy Art for that. He's a keeper that gives new meaning to the phrase "Home is where the he(art) is."

7/10