Here’s a surprise I bet no one saw coming:
I will watch virtually anything related to Halloween.
From the most silly, childish TV special to the darkest of horrors, if I think some sort of media will capture the essence of my favorite time of year, you can most definitely bet that I’ll give it a watch. I’m not snobby, I don’t discriminate. There are some I like better than others, of course, and some I don’t like much at all, but it’s always interesting to see what’s out there.
Sometimes my interest and thought process goes far beyond just the Halloween aspect of it as well.
Such was the case with a movie I watched a couple of months back, called All Hallows’ Eve. If you’re involved in the horror community at all, you’ve probably at least heard or seen pictures of a character known as Art the Clown.
To my knowledge, I’ve never suffered from coulrophobia. As a child, I was pretty much indifferent toward clowns. I had a clown doll from my grandfather that I treasured. At carnivals and fairs, I didn’t go out of my way to interact with clowns, but I didn’t necessarily shy away from them, either. In my adult life, I’ve grown to love creepy clowns. (One of my most favorite fictional characters is Twisty from American Horror Story.) Art intrigued me from the moment pictures of him started circulating in my social media feeds, yet I don’t think it was until the day I watched the movie, or shortly before then, that I realized his first feature film appearance was not actually Terrifier, but All Hallows’ Eve. Creepy clowns and Halloween?! Of course I was in!
All Hallows’ Eve is the tale of two children and their babysitter, who stumble upon an unmarked VHS tape in one of the children’s trick or treat bags after returning home on Halloween night. Of course the kids want to watch it and the babysitter eventually gives in. This alone is such an eerie thought to me. I’ve always been a fan of “lost episode” creepypastas and those types of stories. Something about them always sends a chill down my spine as I read them. While I know that they’re works of fiction, it’s very much something that seems like it could easily happen in reality. Imagine turning on the TV one day, or running across a strange tape, or a video file on a secondhand computer, and seeing something so strange and horrifying, not knowing whether to believe it’s real or just someone’s sick, morbid joke. That’s exactly what happens in All Hallows’ Eve. On the video are three short films, all featuring Art the Clown in some capacity, The children are sent to bed after the first film, a truly dark and sadistic story called The 9th Circle, wondering exactly what makes those “lost episode” stories so intriguing: Have they just merely watched a scary movie, or something that actually happened?
As the children ponder this and compare notes on their reactions to Art himself, the babysitter of course watches the remaining two films. The middle one, in my opinion, is the weakest of the three, with a strange alien home invasion. The only mention of Art in this one is a painting, something the husband of the main woman in the film has been working on. She speaks of his latest “work of art” (pun intended) as being of just a “terrible face”, finally revealed at the end to, of course, be that of Art the Clown. While the rest of this short film was blah to me, the moment the painting is revealed is truly an eerie one. Between that and what’s going on in our base story with the babysitter, you truly start to wonder if just seeing or thinking of Art the Clown somehow starts merging his reality with your own.
The final film, the basis for Art’s full-length movie, Terrifier, truly lives up to its name. This one is the most brutal and gruesome, and you also start to get a feel for just how smart Art really is. What he does to the woman in this film seems to be the work of a skilled surgeon, which makes him all the more dangerous.
Things don’t end happily in the main story, either, but you probably guessed that. It’s never fully explained, but I believe my theory based on the second short film to be correct: Seeing or thinking of Art can bring him into your world. The eeriest shot of the whole film is at the very end, of Art creeping around a boiler room, most likely in the house where the babysitter and her charges are, and he seems to be staring right out at the viewer. I won’t lie, a part of me expected to find him standing right behind me as I watched. I was home alone and doing laundry the day I watched this movie for the first time, and I found myself incredibly jumpy when I had to go down into the basement alone, Doesn’t help that the laundry room is off the boiler room here, either! I haven’t looked over my shoulder and raced up the stairs so fast since I was a child running from an invisible monster in my own mind. This movie, and its antagonist, truly did its job.
As the children ponder this and compare notes on their reactions to Art himself, the babysitter of course watches the remaining two films. The middle one, in my opinion, is the weakest of the three, with a strange alien home invasion. The only mention of Art in this one is a painting, something the husband of the main woman in the film has been working on. She speaks of his latest “work of art” (pun intended) as being of just a “terrible face”, finally revealed at the end to, of course, be that of Art the Clown. While the rest of this short film was blah to me, the moment the painting is revealed is truly an eerie one. Between that and what’s going on in our base story with the babysitter, you truly start to wonder if just seeing or thinking of Art the Clown somehow starts merging his reality with your own.
The final film, the basis for Art’s full-length movie, Terrifier, truly lives up to its name. This one is the most brutal and gruesome, and you also start to get a feel for just how smart Art really is. What he does to the woman in this film seems to be the work of a skilled surgeon, which makes him all the more dangerous.
Things don’t end happily in the main story, either, but you probably guessed that. It’s never fully explained, but I believe my theory based on the second short film to be correct: Seeing or thinking of Art can bring him into your world. The eeriest shot of the whole film is at the very end, of Art creeping around a boiler room, most likely in the house where the babysitter and her charges are, and he seems to be staring right out at the viewer. I won’t lie, a part of me expected to find him standing right behind me as I watched. I was home alone and doing laundry the day I watched this movie for the first time, and I found myself incredibly jumpy when I had to go down into the basement alone, Doesn’t help that the laundry room is off the boiler room here, either! I haven’t looked over my shoulder and raced up the stairs so fast since I was a child running from an invisible monster in my own mind. This movie, and its antagonist, truly did its job.
I was excited, if not a bit apprehensive, to watch the full-length film version of Terrifier. I fully prepared myself to get into that mindset again. I was ready to be scared and unnerved in that same way again that would bring me back, briefly, to my childhood “monster under the bed” type days.
That was not quite the case, though.
I enjoyed the movie. I really did. Like I said, I’m not at all snobby about horror movies and I don’t think I have the same expectations that many others who are into the genre have. If something entertains me, I’ll tell you it’s worth a watch, and I think that Terrifier most definitely is, if you’re into dark, gory horror and slasher films. But at the same time, that’s also my issue with it.
Compared to the first film, with its unnerving vibes and hints toward the supernatural and psychological, Terrifier is really just a slasher film.
Don’t get me wrong, this movie has some of the most interesting and brutal kills I’ve ever seen, and Art is still a deeply disturbing character that you can’t help but wonder about, but it didn’t leave me with the same eerie “don’t go in the basement alone” feeling that All Hallows’ Eve did. When I finished watching this movie, I was deeply satisfied with what I’d just seen, and am very much looking forward to the upcoming sequel, but I think part of me was just a little disappointed that I didn’t truly get scared this time. I didn’t feel any differently than if I’d just watched a movie about Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees. It’s incredibly good slasher fare and I think Art definitely has more than enough potential to become the next slasher icon, but it was kind of a different animal from the first film.
If I had to describe Art in Terrifier, I’d say he’s almost as if Freddy Krueger took up mime. He’s a bit more comical in this than he was in his previous appearance, but hey, he is a clown after all. He also doesn’t seem the least bit supernatural in this one until the very end, somehow jolting back to life in the morgue after graphically blowing his own brains out. This brings me back to The 9th Circle, the first short film in All Hallows’ Eve, that almost implies Art to be an agent of the Devil. I’d love to see that gone into in Terrifier 2. The other thing that bugged me a bit is, as in the original Terrifier short, he removes a woman’s breasts in this movie, but doesn’t sew her up in the same surgical way he did in the short film. That implication that he had some surgical knowledge was incredibly creepy to me (I was almost starting to think of him as similar to Dr. Arden in American Horror Story: Asylum.) and he seemed get a bit sloppier in this one. But then, in either installment, there never seems to be much method to Art’s madness, so who knows what he may have been thinking each time?
Am I overanalyzing? Most likely, but such is my way when a fictional character intrigues me. In short, I would most definitely recommend both movies, if you’re a horror fan who enjoys a lot of gore and doesn’t mind clowns. If you’re in the mood for something more eerie and almost psychological, All Hallows’ Eve is likely the better choice. If you’re more of a slasher fan and looking to meet a character who could easily sit among the likes of Michael, Jason, Freddy, Leatherface, etc., then Terrifier is likely the one for you. And if you feel like checking out both, let me know if you see what I see. I’m very curious to get some other opinions on the matter.
Stay spooky, my friends. And don’t let the clowns bite...or saw you in half or anything like that...
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