I figured that this is gonna be a bit repetitive, so lumping them all together with some relative quicktakes. The 3rd one has actually garnered a few good words, so I figured I’d check it out. But, being the OCD movie completist I am, I can’t just jump into the third of a series. So here’s we’s goes.
Dread Central Presents...Huh! Looks like the old website got into the movie producin biz, eh? We do have a kinda Interesting, disturbing start to the movie. A Victim being interviewed, she...got fucked up. Then we meet Art the Clown. Looks to have himself a wicked little arsenal of all kindsa nasty tools. And it seems, with Halloween, he is on the hunt. Creepy. Slow, but Creepy. Then about halfway through, yeah, it goes full gore-fest. More mice for the clown cat to kill in brutal ways. Not much of a story, but the dude in the clownsuit? Yeah, genuinely scary with his antics. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he started off as a mime before graduating to clown school, the best of both worlds! It’s a barebones story, edited in a high-contrast super-saturated look that is fitting. Can’t say it’s particularly engaging though, just a lot of jump scares and torture pron. But it’s apparently enough to establish this fkn Clown as a new horror icon.
Bloody Disgusting picking up part of the tab on this one? Spread the wealth, I guess. Starts up pretty immediate from the last. New cast of characters, obviously. Mostly. A little more plot, surreal, fantastical or otherwise. A lot more brutal gore and hardcore shit between family dramas. A mom that’s, yeah, kind of a bitch, her cosplay daughter and maybe-disturbed son. And a killer that seems unkillable. Funny, I saw a trailer for a new film yesterday for the first time in a long time. Horror movie. I’m like, this is A Nightmare on Elm Street in new wrappings. The trailer was for Black Phone 2? A sequel of a rip-off copy with visible kernels of corn-nuggets in the turd-popsicle. Allegedly. Haven’t seen it though… But this movie kinda reminds me of that, too. At least here we learn the big reveal of the movie’s name Terrifier here! OOOoooooooOOOh! Shocking! So deep! It Needs about 50 minutes shaved from the run-time. Ok. We got it. No reason a movie like this needs more than 90 minutes to tell. And that’s being generous. Seriously, did Human Centipede set a new bar for shitty horror movies here? Technically done well, improved from the first movie with adding a bit of the Hero’s Journey into it but...It’s...pretty gratuitous with the gore.
After part 2, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to continue but ultimately this was the one that was recommended so, hopefully Writer/Director Damien Leone had further developed his skillsets and maybe added a little subtlety and/or nuance to his kitbag in the meantime.
Interesting switch-up, to the Christmas Season. A little more depth. A little more black humor worked in beyond the mime stuff. But at least now the characters seem to have a little dimension to them. A little more backstory, at least on the Warrior Princess side. A lot of time burned on the opening scene, seems to be a bit superfluous, but I guess they had to play the Christmas thing hard instead of Halloween.
This one continues in the trend of the utmost disturbing and inventive in methods of torture and killing. Of course open-ended too, because this is now a fully exploitable franchise. Even popular enough to get some cameos from Tom Savini (suitable), Clint Howard (weird) and, well, Dan Roebuck? That dude pops up in the strangest films. And Don’t care what you say, in the game of rock-paper-scissors, chainsaw always wins. Always. See Deadites #1-273 for confirmation. But Still just a lot of masochistic excessive gore. I appreciate the subtle film nods, but this is still 30+ minutes too long.
But at least here is a new unique character, and I do give credit that it improves a bit with each one, where most other films are kinda the law of diminishing returns with their sequels. So unfortunately I sat through the first, the second was still cringe, with the third one probably finally like the first A Nightmare on Elm Street level of creativity and depravity, but with more gore. And Depravity. Will I watch the inevitable 4th Terrifier? I dunno. Maybe, just to see if Damien Leone can beat the odds and make a better film then these, or if it starts its inevitable decline before somebody else gets a hold of the franchise and sullies it further with a remake, origin story or side-character expansion movie nobody asked for. But the fact so little actual information is dealt out in these, they are starting to seem like overly-long episodes of a television series. Little payoff by the end, just a lot of gore, pain and misery.
