I.
I can hardly believe it’s been three years since Terrifier 2 took the horror world by storm. With viral marketing that claimed moviegoers were hospitalized after witnessing the on-screen graphic violence and an all-out performance by David Howard Thornton as Art the Clown, Damien Leone’s little franchise that could was suddenly a massive phenomenon. It was wild to see everyday people suddenly taking an interest in a film series that firmly resides within the horror’s most extreme niche. Because I’m “that guy who writes horror stories,” dads in the neighborhood were so curious if I knew anything about the movie. One of them—a salesman—was predictably excited about how it was marketed and how it managed to cross over to mainstream audiences, making $15.82 million on a budget of $250,000.
It’s kind of insane that Terrifier 2 did as well as it did. This wasn’t a snarky, self-aware slasher made by a major studio and featuring a cast made up of hot A-listers, nor was this Oscar bait dressed up for Halloween where the monster is a metaphor for a single person’s trauma. It doesn’t directly address sociopolitical issues in the age of Trump, and it isn’t a remake of a popular film from the genre’s storied past. This is a sequel to a mostly plotless effort that had garnered a cult following due to its impressive practical effects and Thornton’s performance. Like its predecessor, Terrifier 2 leans hard into sadistic violence, but unlike that film, the sequel boasts a runtime of over two hours, and it contains elements of the surreal.
And yet, somehow, this fiercely independent horror film has seen a level of success seldom seen anymore outside the machinations of the studio system. People who don’t love it sure seem to love talking about it, and for Damien Leone and his investors’ bottom line, that’s more than enough.
II.
Despite the hype, I didn’t catch Terrifier 2 in the theater. The me of 2022 and the me of 2002 couldn’t be farther apart. In the early 2000s, my priority was seeing as many horror movies as possible. Old ones, new ones, independent, mainstream, meekly suggestive, unabashedly hardcore—it didn’t matter; if it was horror, I was either lining up to see it in the theater or renting it on VHS or DVD.
My life is different now. Bandwidth is hard to come by when you’re an adult with responsibilities, so I’m particular about how I spend that bandwidth. The fact of the matter is this: although I appreciated the practical effects and Thornton’s performance in the original Terrifier, its lack of story pretty much guaranteed that any follow-up would end up on the backburner in favor of films with storylines that more immediately excited me and, of course, reading books. It’s worth noting that back in the early 2000s, I had filmmaking aspirations, so devouring every horror movie I could made more sense than it does for me now as a writer of horror prose.
I was also admittedly intimidated by the movie’s two-hours-plus runtime. How the hell could something as episodic as the first keep up that kind of momentum for over two hours? Did I really want to subject myself to gory set piece after gory set piece for that long if there wasn’t a story to support these moments of bombastic graphic violence? Honestly, not really.
Listen, I’ve seen Cannibal Holocaust, both versions of Last House on the Left, I Spit on Your Grave, Tokyo Gore Police, A Serbian Film, The Human Centipede 2, Hostel, both Nekromantik movies, Septic, Rob Zombie’s entire filmography, Bloodsucking Freaks, a handful of the Saw movies, and House on the Edge of the Park. In other words, I don’t need to prove anything to myself as far as whether I “have what it takes” to visually and sonically subject myself to such cruelty. I got my gore card in my wallet. The blood may be dry and darkened to more of a dull brown than a lurid red, but it’s still there, tucked behind old receipts and a library card.
That said, Terrifier 2 hasn’t gone away. People are still talking about it. A third entry was released last year to much fanfare and box office success, and a fourth is currently in production. Like Freddy, Jason, and Michael, Art the Clown isn’t going anywhere.
With October upon us, I’ve decided to try yet again to watch 31 horror movies in 31 days. I have never been able to do this successfully. Between my ADHD (which seems determined to stop me from forming new habits), familial obligations, and my own creativity, something always gets in the way. I usually get off to a good start, though. This year, if I watch 31 horror movies or only three this month, I hope to keep my viewings strictly to films I haven’t seen or haven’t seen in a long time.
After the kids went to sleep on October 1, I decided it was time.
Terrifier 2. Let’s do this.
III.
The opening scene picks up immediately where the original left off. This is something Halloween II did way back in 1981. I don’t know if it’s because this creative choice is done so rarely or if it’s because doing so comes with a certain immediacy, but I’ve always enjoyed seeing a sequel that starts as if no time at all has passed since the film that preceded it. Here, Art the Clown is in the morgue, fucking shit up after being resurrected by a demonic little girl clown that, at first, only he can see. After washing his clown suit, playing a game of pat-a-cake with clown girl, and impaling a bystander Phineas Gage-style, the film jumps forward a year. It’s here where we meet Sienna Shaw, a final girl unlike any final girl you’ve ever seen.
What transpires over the next two hours is a brutal game of cat-and-mouse. Sienna, haunted by nightmares of the Clown Cafe and memories of her deceased father, prepares for Halloween. We get insight into her relationships with her hardworking but damaged mother, oddball little brother, and two friends. This gets intercut with moments of Art wreaking havoc in increasingly violent ways before he and Sienna have their big showdown.
We get a couple of cameos along the way from Felissa Rose (known for her role as Angela in Sleepaway Camp) and Chris Jericho (professional wrestler and outspoken fan of the aforementioned Bloodsucking Freaks). We’re also treated to some inspired use of synthwave tracks, most notably The Midnight’s “The Equaliser (Not Alone),” which plays as Sienna builds her angel-winged Halloween costume to prepare for a party on that night of nights. It’s a song that brings both comfort and menace, oddly fitting when thinking about this film. Like House of 1000 Corpses, Trick ‘r Treat, and those gorgeous autumnal shots from the opening moments of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, the spooky, cozier horror imagery cocoons us in a false sense of security that makes the savagery even more jarring.
And “savagery” is an apt description for the violence in Terrifier 2. I don’t know if I’m getting softer as I’ve matured, but I had a hard time watching Art doing his thing. Most disturbing (and perhaps realistically), his victims don’t die right away. Unlike what’s typically seen in slashers, people don’t catch a hatchet to the face or an arrow to the throat and then slump lifelessly before the scene cuts away. These poor souls struggle in the best-case scenarios. In the worst, pain and terror has stripped them of the will to live, yet their bodies won’t let them slip away.
I hated watching these scenes, but here’s a hot take for your Tuesday morning: I wasn’t supposed to enjoy watching these atrocities. For the first time in years, the desensitization I’ve built up was smashed, flayed, burned, and melted away. I didn’t just want Art to get his comeuppance by the end of this thing. I fucking needed it.
So, who’s up to such a task? More importantly, how do they pull it off.
Let’s get weird, my friends.
IV.
Alchemy is an ancient tradition concerned with purifying, maturing, and perfecting certain materials. It’s mostly known as the practice of turning base metals into gold, but that’s only one alchemical practice, and even that may only be a symbolic description of alchemy’s true aims. The discipline has been practiced throughout history in numerous regions throughout the world by people from various walks of life. The process of breaking down, rebuilding, and perfecting is universal, sometimes undertaken formally by self-proclaimed magicians and other times practiced intuitively and unknowingly by faithful, noble fools.
The story of alchemy is a one of transformation, of perfecting oneself into a higher form in a process called the “magnum opus” or “The Great Work.” Storytelling theories like the hero’s journey most certainly detail a transformation process, but I argue that its many steps both dilute and add rigidity to what already exists in alchemical tradition, and that the best stories are alchemical acts.
This transformation has four stages: First comes the decomposition, a blackening—it’s a state of chaos, of massa confusa. You can see this in the original Terrifier; its episodic senseless violence in which the only surviving character is left literally without a face is this tale’s prima materia, the chaos from which the story emerges. We also see it in the remnants of final girl Sienna’s life: the sketchbook left behind by her father prior to his death, the fallout from his suicide, her prophetic nightmares featuring Art the Clown, and the blackening of the wings she’s made for her Halloween costume when her room catches fire.
The second stage of alchemical transformation is concerned with bringing light and clarity to the prima materia and dividing the two opposing principles. In Terrifier 2 this is shown by the sword (a gift from her father) emerging from the bedroom fire’s ashes unscathed. It’s shown in how the narrative divides between Art’s murderous antics and Sienna’s home life, dual plot threads destined to intertwine but first must be separated. The killings themselves, bodily destruction by a perpetrator who is now more than physical matter, also represent a separation of sorts—that of life from flesh.
In the third stage, the alchemist’s inner “solar” light shows. They no longer need their reflective “lunar” light. They are more purely themselves, less the reflection of others. We see this most in Terrifier 2 when Sienna is rolling on ecstasy and in the midst of a scolding by her permanently exhausted mother, she realizes how much she loves her mother and makes it a point to tell her. They share a moment, brought on by intoxication, yes, but it’s still honest, expressed after the disintegration of Sienna’s inhibitions while under the influence of the drug. The ecstasy is a plot device to get us to this beautiful moment. Were this a sword and sorcery adventure, this sudden and passing appearance of Sienna’s pure spirit would have been expressed differently, but in a 2022-set slasher film, it makes sense to be coaxed out under these circumstances.
In the finale of Terrifier 2, Sienna returns from death, dressed in her Valkyrie outfit and wielding her father’s sword. I could be wrong, but I think this is the only instance of a “final girl” becoming as supernatural as the killer in order to defeat him (at least until the next sequel). This mirrors the fourth stage of alchemy, which is all about the integrating of opposites and the emergence of a newer, truer self.
V.
I don’t know much about Damien Leone.
From what I’ve read and seen, he strikes me as a fan above all—he’s tenacious, creative, and business-savvy, but a fan just the same. Like a lot of us, he longs for the innovation and playfulness embodied by 1980s horror movies. If any of these movies were “about” something as far as higher metaphors went, enjoyment was not predicated on understanding such deeper meanings or aligning with any political ideology (yes, I know there are exceptions like Society and Day of the Dead, get outta my comments). You can meditate on possible deeper meanings (and I encourage you to do so), but the beauty of these films is that they also work just fine if you’re simply looking to escape life for 90 minutes.
I bring this up to say that I sincerely doubt Leone knows anything about alchemy or intentionally imbued his insanely popular sequel with elements of the esoteric. If those elements are there, and I argue that they are, it’s most likely by accident. He’s less Magician and more of a Fool.
There’s nothing wrong with that, by the way. The Fool acts on faith, on intuition, and on instincts. This sometimes means he faces a major learning curve. In Leone’s work, this shows in the episodic sloppiness of the first film. I haven’t met a single person who doesn’t like the second better than the first. This is because Leone is also committed to learning by doing, learning in public, and he’s okay with failing forward. I think that’s why a lot of indie horror creators (regardless of their chosen medium) cite him and Terrifier as an inspiration. They see themselves in this work, in Leone.
And here’s the thing about Fools: when they land on a goldmine, it’s usually because they’re doing something they genuinely love. Damien Leone loves this strange, violent universe that powers his money-printing franchise. If he didn’t - if he was writing and directing these movies cynically, in hopes of making a quick buck - I seriously doubt they’d be as successful as they are. It takes a special kind of talent or a property with a built-in audience (hi, Marvel) to do something solely for the money and still have it connect with people.
VI.
Listen, I don’t have a huge audience, but I do have a dedicated one. That isn’t a flex. I say this to demonstrate that I know a thing or two about building a fanbase. Anytime I tried writing to market, I produced an inferior product. I have struggled to stay consistent on social media (yes, even Substack) for more than a couple of weeks without burning out and needing time away. I make the art I love; I’ve even gone as far as to call a good many of my books “love letters.” Sometimes, they’re love letters to a piece of media that’s stuck with me: Goddamn Graveyard Zombies pays tribute to Return of the Living Dead, while Snow Angels owes much to John Carpenter’s The Fog. I’ve also written love letters to my younger self (Haunted Hearts). 1
I hear people describe certain works of prominent creators as “passion projects.” For me, they’re all passion projects. I think the same can be said about Damien Leone and his Terrifier universe. The success of these films has been attributed to a more violent culture, a creeping sociopathy that’s spread through us, as even our most secular news venues are doing everything to convince us that the End Times are here.
I see Terrifier’s popularity through a different, more hopeful lens. It’s a testament to one’s passion, dedication, and pure expression winning out. In a lot of ways, we aspire to be Damien Leone: a person with a stubborn vision that crosses over in spite of itself. Personal expression—artistic and otherwise—is how we cope with the mad world. It’s what makes life livable.
See, Art is the living embodiment of the misery inflicted upon us by a larger world that is indifferent to us at best and actively hostile toward us at worse. He rips us and our loved ones apart, and he fucking laughs about it. It’s hard not to draw comparisons between him and the powerful people who seek to do us harm. Like those elites, this cruelty is his art.
Sienna Shaw is us, struggling to persevere and transcend despite the bloodbath around her. Only through alchemical transformation does she overcome, and through evolution (emotional, psychological, spiritual, etc.), we will too. It will look different for each of us because we’re each aiming for our best, truest selves. However, like Sienna making her own costume in her bedroom as Halloween and destiny approach, I suspect it will begin with our art.
All linked books are available on Amazon and such, but I’ll always link to signed copies at the webstore first.