Review #253: Terrifier (2016)

This review was originally written in October 2023.

Gabe's Horror Movie October Review #7 - Terrifier (2016)

The Greek philosopher Plato proposed a hypothesis that the physical world is not as "real" or "true" as ideas, which are timeless, absolute and unchangeable. Ideas, or Forms, are the non-physical essences of all things, of which objects and matter in the physical world are imperfect imitations. So while you can go to the store and buy an orange, for example, there exists the "ideal orange" that has all of the traits an orange should have, and every orange you buy is striving to be this "Platonic ideal" of an orange (but is an imperfect copy of it). In one of his dialogues, Plato describes a world beyond our world where all of these ideal forms could be found- in that respect, everything in our world is an echo, a shadow of its perfect counterpart in that "world of Forms". I put forth that Terrifier is the Platonic ideal of a slasher film. If the world of Forms has an ideal shelf with an ideal pile of ideal DVDs on it, the ideal slasher film would basically just be a regular copy of Terrifier (except maybe the box art is really good).

I'm being hyperbolic of course but my point is to say that Terrifier is the perfect example of what it's trying to be, and what it's trying to be is a slasher film. If you took all of the traits of a slasher film (good and bad), and cranked up every dial to the maximum, the natural outcome is Terrifier. Every trope, every cliche, every expected trait of a slasher film is right there on-screen, exactly where you would have expected it. This doesn't mean the film itself is perfect (it's a perfect slasher film, not a perfect film- there's a difference)- and I'm not going to give it a 10/10. But for what it's trying to do, it does it very, very well.

Terrifier follows a couple girls leaving a Halloween party, when they run into a creepy clown (who I'm only now finding out was actually first featured in a different horror movie, that I haven't seen). The clown follows them, he kills a bunch of people in extremely brutal ways, and then the movie gets a little bizarre at the end and then it's over. Terrifier is entertaining for its entire runtime, it's paced extremely well, the gore effects are fantastic and all of the kills are creative, and there's just enough mystery and intrigue to keep the viewer wanting more. I know I went on about it for two long paragraphs but seriously, everything that every other slasher is trying to do, is done as well as can be done with Terrifier.

But like I said, it's not perfect. There's certain slasher tropes that really suck, and the movie would be better if they just weren't there, and the ideal slasher film unfortunately includes those. This means the characters sometimes are complete idiots, getting themselves killed for no reason except that nobody had died in a couple minutes. Sometimes the protagonists knock out the killer and then just run away instead of making sure he stays down. (One time that led to a genuinely hilarious subversion, when the clown just whipped out a gun and shot the person who was beating him with a 2x4, but that led to another dumb trope: a character not hearing numerous gunshots despite being directly outside the same building.) As much as this movie did right, it really felt like a misstep to fall victim to the same bad writing other slashers do, when I'm confident the writers could have written some much smarter, much cleverer events instead of the ones that I hate. But that just shows the ideal slasher film is, itself, still just a slasher film.

Seriously though, the effects are amazing and this was a very fun film. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who dislikes violence, because it's a VERY violent movie, but it's clear that the people who made this took the process very seriously while still having a lot of fun with it. All in all this movie was great and I'm excited to see how they upped the ante in the sequel!

Overall Rating: 8/10 Adorable Rats Meant to Be Scary

Actors' Other Credits: Near the end of the film a second exterminator shows up to the building, played by actor Michael Leavy. Leavy played the role of the Staten Island Clown, and is credited with starting the "scary clown" craze in 2014!