Movie Review: “Terrifier 2”

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Credit: The official "Terrifier 2" trailer on Youtube

Join reporters Melina Barris and Jessi Dretler in a review of the movie “Terrifier 2.”

Melina Barris and Jessi Dretler

The bone-chilling film, “Terrifier 2,” was released on Oct. 6, 2022. This highly anticipated bloodbath of a movie left many viewers sick to their stomachs, including ourselves.

“Terrifier 2” is the sequel movie to “Terrifier 1,” which is known for its confusing plot and awful scenes full of gore. There have been cases of viewers throwing up and being sent to the hospital while viewing the gruesome images of the film. Some movie theaters provided throw-up bags to the movie viewers when it came out in 2016, and other theaters took this movie out of their movie options, including the AMC Dine-in theater in Framingham.

So, after hearing about the negative reactions to the violence of the first movie and the sequel and because we’re not big fans of horror movies themselves, we were very prepared for the upsetting images ahead of us.

“Terrifier 2” is the horrifying tale of a killer clown named Art who torments a teenage brother and sister in Miles county, New Jersey, on Halloween night. Throughout the movie shows several grim events.

This film starts with a horror-struck opening, showing Art the clown’s recent and brutal acts towards Miles. The movie follows a high school student named Sienna, whose brother has an unnatural attachment to Art. Art is very well known in Miles County as he killed numerous citizens years ago, yet he was later assumed dead. Sienna has a vivid dream with Art in it, which made her concerned that Art was returning. After this dream, Art frequently appears throughout her day and then later begins to haunt and kill her friends and family.

A major part of Art’s murders is that they start with the element of surprise. Many of Art’s victims do not know that he is a threat, as they just see him as an average costume clown. Art makes appearances at schools, in Halloween stores and even is spotted trick-or-treating. No one in Miles expects Art to be alive, so most citizens ignore the clown until it is too late. Watching the scenes when people thought Art was just someone dressing up for Halloween had us on the edge of our seats.

There were multiple parts of the film where we had to shut our eyes until the scene was over. An example of this was when Art attempted to brutally murder one of Sienna’s friends in her bedroom. Art left her propped up and barely alive on her bed, waiting for her mom to come home and see her body. The story of this scene left us feeling uneasy, even though the blood shown didn’t seem realistic to us.

We were disgusted by the way Art chose to cruelly kill his victims, especially because murderous scenes filled most of the movie. In our opinion, the film felt way more focused on the bloodshed than the actual plot. The film writer, Damian Leone, obviously tried to get a working plot. However, it seemed as if he attempted to force multiple storylines into one, so we both agree that there was no plot to this movie.

The movie concluded with a very unorganized and bewildering scene. However, it grabbed our attention as we found out that Sienna’s vivid dream foreshadowed the story. Her dream of Art came to life. In the end, we also see other acts that Art committed, including cannibalism, which made us quite distressed. Scenes like this made us want to stop watching altogether, yet we pushed through to the end and finished the movie. The disgust and violence of the movie stuck with us even after we finished watching it. We both couldn’t stop picturing Art’s victims’ faces.

Because we struggled to watch this movie, we would not recommend it to anyone who is not a horror movie fan. And for people who love horror movies, this movie was definitely a terror. The violence of this movie was so disturbing and gross that we wanted to stop watching. A definite rating of 1/10 would fit our opinion of this movie. Some points interested us, but overall we would not watch this again.