Chad

jacob_b

I really don't know how I feel about horror villains with guns. It just kind of takes away the thrill and scare of it for me. Still not sure how I feel about this movie...

Undeadcow

Sometimes Terrifier struck me as showing promise like with the news reporter (which didn't make much sense) or the start of the pizza parlor but other times it's stupid and unintentionally cringe worthy (like when Art is cuddled with the strange homeless woman soothing him with 'have you ever known a mother's touch'). Why does skinning victims and wearing their skin feel cliche rather than shocking? Every time I see it I think, oh they're trying to be like Leatherface.

The ending wraparound was a nice touch.
I agree. With Terrifier it felt almost kind of tame despite the gore; there are scarier clown villains (i.e. Pennywise, The Last Circus isn't horror but is intense clowns done right) and not much to the premise. Most of the buildup seemed to be 'Art the Clown is so cool/scary/evil' without plot, more a series of short vignettes than a film itself. The format worked a bit better as an anthology film with All Hallows Eve, where it seemed more far out and envelope pushing. The silent clown gag was sometimes promising but one note and I felt it hurt the film by being so much more about Art than much of anything else - all the characters felt thin. More pathos please. I liked some of the violence but it needed a better hook and buildup.

Mondo Kane

Sadly, this felt more "torture porn" than "slasher" to me. While the fx were great, this still ended up being too mean-spirited for even MY tastes.

Apologies for those who need yet another cleanser after this. Damn, what a brutal challenge this must be for some of y'all!

Trevor

Completely without value, 0/10.

kurupt

This is exactly how I felt about this one too. It was such a slog to get through, with very little actual scares IMO (I honestly thought the scene with the two girls in the diner with Art was the only time in the film I felt creeped out more than revolted by the torture-porniness of it all)

jacob_b

Very much true. They tried way too hard with this film, it seemed like. Shocked it got such high reviews on Rotten Tomato. Might have to check out the anthology film just to see if the clown is a bit better and more scarier.

DaveyJoe

I'm not usually afraid of clowns but this clown is freaking me out.

The brunette actress in this movie is so cute. I dated a girl that looks just like her last year. I hope nothing bad happens to her.

DaveyJoe

I really like the look of this movie. It has that raw, gritty feeling you would see in grindhouse horror films shot on 16mm
It's a nice change of pace from the glossy look of most digitally shot horror films these days.

Points deducted for setting a scene in a pizza joint and not showcasing some delicious looking pizza that makes me hungry. I mean the guy just brought it out and they're immediately picking it at it with their fingers? Why isn't it piping hot?

I've never been kicked out of a place immeditely after using the bathroom but I have a friend with IBS who has.

DaveyJoe

The guy playing Art is stealing the show. His facial expressions are priceless and his body language is very creepy. There's a sort of dark comedy to some of his pantomimes.

The sister here looks way too old to be in college.

Why not just get an Uber instead of waiting in the car for the clown to kill you?

DaveyJoe

Only post 2008 recession does a scene of a pizza boy cleaning up shit instead of giving his boss the finger and walking out make sense. Times is tough.

There's an odd amount if chemistry being developed between the heroine and the pest control guy. Just use the bathroom and move on unless they're setting up the rat killer as the White Dick Hallorann.

This girl is scrolling through social media while listening to AM radio? Hold up, when is this movie supposed to be set? Put on Spotify, girl.

DaveyJoe

...fuck.

wishbone

Likely the first and last time I attempt to complete the subset challenge.

WillieMLF

I think I echo many of the sentiments here, when I say that I really didn't care for this one. This clown sure was creepy, but I seem to be over the whole clown horror thing.

I had been dealing with car repairs Tuesday, so I plopped right down in the waiting room with my iPad, and I watched Terrifier. I think the smell of tires and diesel somehow heightened the experience, but I wouldn't recommend it. One of the office guys wandered over during the aftermath of the hacksaw scene, asking me if I was watching something good....

Torture porn sums it up for me. I was kind of surprised to see the 'heroine' killed off half way through, expecting her to hook up with the exterminator. Do you spray for rats? If you do, I don't think you want to be in the building while it happens.

I'm pretty sure I've seen this playing on cable, but it didn't keep my attention to warrant more than a minute. I'm curious if this had some editing, as I'm sure it would have completely gutted the movie.

DaveyJoe

I liked this more than most, and I am firmly against torture porn. I can handle violence and gore if there's genuine artistry pushing the film forward, and I think that was the case here. However, I think the film made a major misstep by killing off the lead character halfway through the runtime. After that I struggled to remain invested. I didn't care about the sister or the exterminator, they weren't developed at all.

You can anchor the film with the villain if there's a sympathetic angle or a compelling characterization, as seen in films like Peeping Tom or Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. But that wasn't the case here. Art was terrifying and effective, but there was nothing in his characterization to help him carry a film.

It seemed like the director wanted to launch an iconic villain franchise in the vein of Jason or Freddy, which is fine; but watching The Terrifier was like if all of the Carnage of the first four Friday the 13th movies were condensed into one film. It came out too strong from the gate. I can appreciate the director wanted to buck certain trends but I think he should have stepped back and evaluate what made those franchises successful in the first place.

There was definitely a lot of promise here, though, and I think the filmmakers have potential. If you had a more traditional slasher narrative structure, this film would have been a total win. There wasn't enough substance to justify the nihilism, give me a good character I can root for throughout the entire runtime. I loved the first 45 minutes, but they lost me after killing off the only likable character.

jholmes

Hi, guys. Checking in from my trip. I watched this on Tuesday on my laptop in the car!

I agree with most of the posters. It felt like pure torture porn to me. The two female characters at the start were funny and cute and I could get into how terrifying and creepy the clown was when they saw him at the restaurant. But once the killing started, which was very early on, those two cool female characters died and then the rest of it just felt like same old same old gore fest.

Also, I'm so TIRED of some of the horror tropes. The one they did over and over here was: the victim gets the upper hand momentarily, gives the villain a little stab or bump on the head, then runs away. People, if a maniac like that were after me, I would SO MAKE SURE HE WAS DEAD. It drives me crazy when they don't bother to even try to kill the guy. Granted, this villain ended up being supernatural and unkillable, I guess, but they didn't know that.

I did think the clown was super scary and I liked bringing in all the clown tropes like the bike and horn, but ultimately this movie just feels incredibly mean spirited and, well, like torture porn.

Trevor

I was screaming at my screen about that continual cycle of “injure bad guy and have upper hand, drop weapon and run away”. One scene she literally got a great knife into the back on him, he was down and unmoving for like 30 seconds, she leaves the weapon there, runs into the next room, and starts looking for a weapon. Wtf!? You just had a weapon! And him vulnerable! Ugh.

clckworang

You summed up much of my thoughts. The film really lost a lot of momentum when the lead was killed. The killer was amusing, but I never really got what he was supposed to be. I guess some sort of supernatural entity.

The beginning of the movie was really the strength. The restaurant scene was definitely a highlight for me. It was so creepy and uncomfortable. It tapped into something that felt more real.

I don't understand the torture porn label. This didn't feel like that to me. It was definitely violent and very gory, but I just didn't see it as torture porn. But that term has been thrown around so many times by so many people about so many different movies that it has really lost all meaning to me.

I liked this film enough to at least be interested in seeing the killer's earlier movie. I'm not sure if I'll get to it this month, though.

jholmes

Exactly. And she leaves HIM the good weapon. This sort of illogical behavior kills a film for me. There's just no excuse why the screenplay/hero can't be more clever than that.

story

Meh. Torture porn is right. Not my cup of tea at all. On top of that, this really dragged, too. This could've been a twenty-minute segment in an anthology movie, which I understand is where this clown is from and wow does it show. Every time it should be over, they have another character drive up or wake up or whatever. At least the sequel isn't super long. Oh, wait...

Spiderbite

Yeah, I watched this one this year as well due to all the hype for part 2 and I never saw part one.

This is straight up torture porn like everyone else before stated. Not a whole lot of value or scares other than just gross parts but I did enjoy the creepy scene in the pizza parlor before the movie really goes nuts with the violence. I enjoyed that part more than anything else in the movie. Clowns have never scared me or creeped me out like a lot of people but the way he just stared and acted toward the main girl in that scene was pretty chilling. Especially when women likely deal with weirdos like this a lot of the time not dressed in clown suits!

I have to say the effects are well done and the slicing of the girl in half was pretty impressive for such a low budget (reported to be $35K).

All in all, I can't say I liked it, but I didn't hate it either. Middle of the road for me overall. But what impresses me most is what was done on the budget it had. I have seen a lot of other movies with way more money look way shitter.

My rating: **1/2 out of *****

ps. I also watched the prior movie All Hallows Eve (2013) before it. Eh. Nothing special and more annoying than this one. Plus, it kept bugging me that the babysitter is supposedly watching the homemade tape of real murders. Which begs the question...who was there to film all the extra camera angles, get coverage in the victims' cars when nowhere near the killer, etc. That kinda drove me nuts. My rating for that movie was *1/2 out of *****

pps...Nice bump story! I always mean to go back and search to see if there was an old review thread from years past and post my thoughts in it if I happened to watch the movie. This should be done more often!