Terrifier 2

In “Homie the Clown,” a fan-favorite Simpsons episode, Homer Simpson goes to clown college. The lessons he receives in baggy pants, balloon animals, and tiny bicycles were probably not drawn directly from the curriculum of an existing clown college, but they at least evince an awareness that such institutions actually exist.

In an adjacent hemisphere of the late 20th century entertainment world, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, a gonzo B-movie throwback, mines campy scares from popular conceptions of circus clowns. For all its mildly gory absurdity, much of what makes it work is its implicit understanding that it’s operating within an ancient performing art.

Terrifier’s Art the Clown, on the other hand, is entirely superficial. There’s no evidence that he’s given much thought to why clowns exist or why people find them funny or scary; he seems to just be some asshole who bought a cheap costume and maybe watched the House of 1000 Corpses trailer amid a steady diet of Marilyn Manson videos. Like Manson, he’s a tiresome, banal provocation for conservative moral panic, offering little more than self-satisfied ugliness for its own sake.

Art’s second feature-length outing, Terrifier 2, is arguably an improvement over the first, in that it has an actual plot and somewhat developed characters. The previous film’s look, akin to a 2010 Instagram filter, has given way to something more palatable, even if it still looks more like something made for Netflix than the famous ’80s slashers that inspired it. The production gets impressive mileage out of its relatively small quarter-million dollar budget. So some good—or at least tolerable—decisions were made.

But so was the bewildering decision to include a song even more annoying than the one in Halloween III. And to give Art a gratuitous sidekick. And to add an ambiguous supernatural element vaguely entwining Art’s destiny with that of a pair of teen siblings (whose late father was apparently some kind of psychic?). And to make this idiotic movie one hundred and forty minutes long.

Given the disheartening staying power of Art’s half-assed bullshit, and the rote trajectory of his slasher forebears, it’s no surprise that he only has more of the same to offer this go-round (and I do mean more—this movie is, once again, almost a full hour longer than the first one). I know mediocrity is hardly disqualifying in popular culture, but I find this particular example entirely uncharismatic.