Main cast: Lauren LaVera (Sienna Shaw), Elliott Fullam (Jonathan Shaw), Sarah Voigt (Barbara Shaw), Kailey Hyman (Brooke), Casey Hartnett (Allie), Charlie McElveen (Jeff), Samantha Scaffidi (Victoria Heyes),  Amelie McLain (The Little Pale Girl), Chris Jericho (Burke), and David Howard Thornton (Art the Clown)
Director: Damien Leone

Terrifier 2, the sequel to—what else?—Terrifier took this long to happen because, if you would believe director and mastermind Damien Leone, he was waiting for the muse to help him sculpt a script that has a strong story.

Oh, if this movie is what he would consider something with more story, I can only imagine what he’d consider an epic… and I don’t know whether I need to see that thing or be scared that it may actually come to be one of these days.

Now, Terrifier didn’t have much of a story. It’s just the supernatural killer in a clown outfit, Art the Clown, brutally and horrifically killing everyone in its way. Now, given how gruesome that movie is, the lack of a story isn’t really an issue, because let’s be real: people won’t be watching it for scintillating dialogues or clever wit. No, they just want to see naked women getting dismembered, and that movie delivered with style and panache.

This time around, Art gets a little clown girl companion that only he can see, and the two of them tear a trail of carnage into the lives of Sienna Shaw, who for some reason has nightmare visions of Art doing his thing, and her brother Jonathan. Of course, the people around these two soon begin to die in beautifully gory ways.

I suppose Terrifier 2 has a little bit more of a story, although if you ask me, “story” here means adding more woo-woo gobbledygook that doesn’t make much sense. Is that a problem, though? The budget and hence the production values are higher, which means the kills look better—I believe this is the biggest reason why people that know of this movie will want to watch it, heh.

Yes, the main characters have more personalities and back stories, and the cast can act better, but come on, the bar has been set so low in the previous movie, it’s definitely easy to beat that bar. I appreciate this, mind you, but honestly, the “deeper” characters are actually just stereotypes warmed over.  The main attraction is still the kills.

Oh boy, those kills. They have to one-up the previous movie, so here are even more gruesome scenes that are a mix of practical effects and some CGI here and there. It’s all tasteless goop, but tampered with a sense of playfulness and self-awareness that makes this movie far more palatable than those faux “artistic” films that try to pass gore and shock elements as some kind of profound statement on humanity and other nonsense.

This one just wants to give the audience a bloody good time, and that’s what it does. Sure, it may not convince anyone that it has any artistic merit, but I’d love to see the psychological profile of people that know of the reputation of this movie and its prequel, and still act all shocked when they see eyeballs and guts flying all across the screen at their faces.

This movie sets out to do what it does, and does it well too. My only concern is that perhaps, in the future, the gore can get pretty old or Mr Leone may catapult himself into self-parody by trying too hard to push the boundaries more and more. For now, though, I’m happy to revel in the unpretentious, unapologetic knee-deep gore in this baby.

One thing, though, really creeps me out: Sienna’s father envisions his teenage daughter as a warrior princess in skimpy bikini chain mail. Really? It’s probably a good thing that the man’s dead!