He looks like a diabolical Marceau mime. Art the clown, hero of Terrify 2 by Damien Leone, has his own sense of celebration. It is not necessary to have seen the first film to understand that he is an extremely inventive killer focused on bloody massacres. Especially during a Halloween night when he tracks down a young woman and her brother by multiplying the crimes in his path. These two victims do not let themselves be done. And the spectator counts the points.
“I wanted the murders to have something special,” says Damien Leone in the press kit. That they appear each time like a bang, that the spectator remains stuck in the hope that the scene ends as soon as possible. And in fact, we have rarely seen such gore and such brutality, which led to the film being banned for those under 16 for its French release. We quickly understand why!
A fainting festival in the USA
Severed heads, viscera galore and other mutilations are on the program of this gore festival which was a surprise success in the United States. It is said that spectators were vomiting or fainted during the screening and that some had to be evacuated by ambulance. If it is undoubtedly an advertising gimmick, the special effects, created by Damien Leone himself, are still enough to shake up the public for a long time as the director gives himself to heart’s content in the field of tripe. There is something there to pass Pennywise, the clown of Thatfor a summer camp leader and The Sadnessarch-violent delirium of last year, for a bluette intended for nursery schools.
A mime by training, David Howard Thornton, who embodies the killer, brings Art the clown into the pantheon of horrific creatures without ever uttering a word. His chilling smile and his gift for “setting fire” and “having a slice of it” make him an ideal companion for lovers of awkward horrors. Tribute to the great names of fantasy (from Ed Wood to Lucio Fulci), Terrify 2 offers a poisoned madeleine that evokes both the “slashers” of the 1980s and the delirium ofHershell Gordon Lewis. Terrify 2 is therefore to be reserved for an informed public, but the latter will enjoy watching this regressive show and assumed as such.