Terrifier 2 ★★★

CONTRARY to what you might think, it’s incredibly hard to create a good horror villain.

I mean a villain that captures the imagination and you can build a franchise on.

There’s Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddie Krueger, Ghostface and Hannibal Lecter.

Plenty of others have tried but most have been straight-to-video and won’t drag people out of their homes.

But I think little-known writer/director Damien Leone could do it with Art the Clown.

Leone played around with the character for a while, including in a horror anthology film, before getting the money to make Terrifier, released in 2016.

In most aspects that was a minor slasher, but Art the Clown set it apart so much that we now have Terrifier 2.

Art is a lightly-built clown who communicates only through mime. He’s also a cold-blooded thrill killer who just likes to watch people come apart.

His simplicity makes him a perfect horror villain.

The 2016 film was lean in running time and story but had some strong, gory moments.

The second film ups the ante considerably.

Every now and then a horror film comes along that allegedly causes some audience members to faint and vomit.

Terrifier 2 is the latest and one sequence in particular will leave you shocked and breathless, thinking what on earth have I just seen.

David Howard Thornton is very good as Art and may well have a long career playing him.

The problem with the new film, however, is the script which meanders and staggers all over the place, pushing the film into various supernatural areas and the running time over two hours.

There are some interesting aspects to Leone’s expanded vision, including some nice nightmarish sequences and the Little Pale Girl who follows Art.

But what the film needed was to not have Leone doing everything himself, particularly the writing.

Criticisms aside, there is no doubt there will be a Terrifier 3 and if Leone can bring the focus back on Art and the gore, he may have a new Halloween staple on his hands.