Terrifier ★★½

WE ALL know somebody who’s terrified of clowns, right?

Based on the poster and description there is no way those people will watch Terrifier (2016).

But for those of us that do, you may well end up in the same boat by the end of the film.

Terrifier is a B-grade slasher film with a limited budget, hence the lack of names in the cast, the tele-visual approach and limited number of locations.

For most of the running time it’s pretty average stuff, indelibly marked by several over-the-top gore sequences, including a woman being sawn in half. Not for the faint-hearted.

But there are a few aspects here that suggest the director, writer and editor, Damien Leone, may have a good horror film in him.

These occur in the first 30 minutes of the film when we follow two women on their way home late at night from a party who decide to have a pizza while they sober up before driving.

Into the pizza joint strides a clown, a lean character dressed in black and white with big shoes and a tiny hat. But its the garish, Joker-like, black makeup around his mouth and eyes that makes him stand out.

That and the intense manner in which he stares at one of the women. There are moments here that are genuinely disturbing and followed-up by a tension-filled encounter in a car park.

In these moments, the performances from David Howard Thornton as the clown and Jenna Kanell as Tara are quite good.

There is a quality about the clown character that maintains your interest – he’s almost like a psychotic version of Marcel Marceau’s classic mime character and I particularly liked the moment with a doll and a homeless woman.

But unfortunately, the second half of the film just descends too much into a typical slasher with copious amounts of gore that will leave only the most diehard of genre fans left.

Still, watch out for Damien Leone.