Listen, we need to have a serious talk about Terrifier. Not the kind of talk where we sit around stroking our metaphorical beards and debating the semiotics of the slasher. I’m talking about a real, boots-on-the-ground conversation about why this movie makes people lose their minds.​

Every time I bring up Art the Clown in polite horror circles—you know the ones, the groups where everyone’s wearing an A24 sweatshirt and talking about how Hereditary changed their lives—I get the same reaction. People roll their eyes. They call it cheap schlock. They say it’s meaningless. And then, inevitably, someone drops the big one: they say it’s degrading to women.

​And honestly? It drives me up the wall. It’s like people have developed collective amnesia about what the word horror actually means. Look it up. It’s right there in the dictionary: an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust. It’s not a gentle meditation on grief that makes you feel slightly uneasy before you go to sleep. It’s supposed to be horrific. And Damien Leone? He’s one of the few people left who actually understands that.​

So, sit down.

And let’s look at why Terrifier is actually the most honest horror movie we’ve had in a decade, and why the people calling it trash are just too scared to admit they can’t handle the heat.​

Putting The Horror Back Into Horror

​We’ve become too soft. Let’s just put that on the table right now. We live in an era of safe horror—movies that are basically dramas with a ghost in the background, or some family trauma hanging over the table. We want our villains to have understandable motives. We want to feel bad for the monster because he had a rough childhood.​

Terrifier looks at all that and spits blood in its face.​

Art the Clown doesn’t have a tragic backstory. He doesn’t have a why. He just is. And that’s what people find so offensive. They’re ignorant of the fact that the most terrifying thing in the world isn’t a demon you can negotiate with; it’s a guy in a greasepaint mask who thinks your intestines are confetti.​

When people call this cheap schlock, they’re usually just reacting to the fact that it doesn’t have a $50 million marketing budget or a cast of Oscar-nominated actors. But if you actually look at the screen, there is nothing cheap about what’s happening. Damien Leone is doing things with practical effects that make these massive studio blockbusters look like a joke. He’s in the trenches, molding latex and mixing five different types of fake blood to get the consistency of a real human liver. That isn’t schlock. That’s craft. The refusal to let the art – no pun intended – of the physical effects die in favor of some soulless CGI monster that doesn’t have any weight.​

If you think Terrifier is just mindless gore, you aren’t paying attention. It’s a masterclass in tension. Think about the pizza shop scene. There’s no blood there. There’s no hacking. It’s just a silent clown sitting in a booth, staring at two girls, wearing a tiny hat and blowing a horn. It is one of the most deeply uncomfortable scenes in modern cinema because it taps into that raw, terrifying reality of being watched by a predator. That’s not trash. That’s pure, distilled dread.​

Let’s Talk About the Misogyny Elephant​

This is the hill where most people want to fight me. They look at the hacksaw scene—the one where Art literally saws a woman in half while she’s hanging upside down—and they immediately scream misogyny! They say it’s degrading to women.

​Give me a break.​

First of all, Art the Clown is an equal-opportunity meat grinder. If you think he’s only mean to women, you clearly missed the part where he turns a guy’s head into a jack-o-lantern or systematically dismembers every living thing in his path. But more importantly, the degrading argument is such a lazy way to avoid talking about what the scene is actually doing.​

Is it brutal? Yes. Is it hard to watch? Absolutely. But is it degrading? Only if you think that showing the reality of violence is the same thing as endorsing it. Terrifier isn’t a movie that hates women; it’s a movie that hates humans. It treats the human body like a biological machine that can be taken apart. It’s looking at the spiritual core of our physical existence—which is that we are all just meat and bone held together by hope and habit.​

The hacksaw scene is a thesis statement. It’s Leone looking at the audience and saying, “You say you like horror? You say you want to be scared? Fine. Let’s see if you can actually handle what it looks like when a human being is destroyed.” It’s a test of your ideological conviction as a fan of the genre.​

If you want to watch a movie where the girls survive because of the power of friendship, go watch a Disney movie. If you want to see what happens when a supernatural psychopath gets a hold of a hacksaw, and some big fucking chains, you watch Terrifier. To call it degrading is to miss the point of the entire genre. Horror is supposed to be transgressive. It’s supposed to cross the line. If it doesn’t make you feel a little sick, it hasn’t done its job.​

People get their panties in a bunch because Terrifier doesn’t give you a safe place to hide. It doesn’t tell you that the victims deserved it, and it doesn’t give them a heroic last stand. It just shows you the raw, terrifying reality of the end.

The Genius of Art the Clown

​Let’s talk about David Howard Thornton, because we don’t talk about him enough. People act like anyone can put on a clown suit and be scary.

Wrong.​

Art is the first truly iconic horror villain we’ve had since the 80s/90s. He’s not a copy of Freddy or Jason or Michael Myers. He’s something entirely different. He’s a silent movie star who wandered into a Snuff film and is happy to be there.

The humor is what makes it work. And I don’t mean “ha-ha” funny—I mean that pitch-black, vaudevillian humor that makes you want to laugh and throw up at the same time. The way he mimes being shocked by his own violence, or the way he wears a victim’s scalp like a wig—it’s brilliant. He’s mocking the very idea of death.

​Art is funny because he’s a performer. He’s not just killing people; he’s putting on a show. And we, the audience, are the spectators, who cannot look away. When he looks into the camera, he’s acknowledging us. He’s saying, “I know you’re watching, and I know you want to see what’s in the bag.” It’s a direct, confrontational connection that most horror movies are too cowardly to make.​

The people who call this mindless are ignorant of the incredible physical performance Thornton is giving. He doesn’t say a word, yet we know exactly what he’s thinking. We see his glee, his boredom, his sudden flashes of rage. He’s a fully realized character who just happens to be a demonic force of nature. He is the gospel of chaos that rejects everything polite society stands for.

The “No Plot” Defense​

“It has no plot.”

​I hear this one all the time, usually from people who think a movie needs forty minutes of exposition about a haunted locket to be good.

Let’s be real: most horror plots are garbage anyway. They’re just filler designed to get us from one scare to the next. Terrifier is just honest enough to cut out the middleman. It’s a lean, mean, 80-minute survival horror. It’s a night in a tenement building with a killer. That’s the plot. What more do you need?

​Do you need to know why the building is abandoned? No. Do you need a scene where the main character talks about her strained relationship with her father? God, no. Terrifier understands that in the moment of true terror, none of that stuff matters. Your arc doesn’t save you from a hacksaw. Your trauma doesn’t make the clown go away.​

The simplicity is its strength. It’s a throwback to the slasher in its purest form. It’s about the feeling of being trapped in a space with something that doesn’t follow the rules of logic or mercy.

​The people who complain about the lack of plot are just looking for a reason to feel superior. They want to be intellectuals about their horror. But you can’t be intellectual about a clown eating a pizza while covered in someone else’s blood. You either feel it, or you don’t. And if you don’t, then don’t try and ruin it for every other fucker because it offended your sensibilities.

Defending “The Trash” To The Death​

At the end of the day, Terrifier is a movie for the fans. It’s for the people who grew up in the back of the video store, looking at the covers of movies they weren’t allowed to watch. It’s for the people who appreciate the smell of latex and the sound of a practical blood squib.

​It’s not for the critics. It’s not for the elevated horror crowd who thinks The Babadook – a boring ass piece of shit that’s about as horrific as an episode of Scooby fucking Doo – is the peak of the genre. And that’s why I love it.​

It’s an act of uncompromising resistance. In a world where everything is being sanded down and made acceptable for the widest possible audience, Damien Leone made a movie that is aggressively unacceptable. It’s a movie that doesn’t care if you like the characters. It doesn’t care if you think it’s too much. It doesn’t care if you think it’s degrading.​

It’s honest. It’s raw. It’s terrifying.​

And that, my friend, is exactly what horror is supposed to be. If we lose movies like Terrifier, then we’ve lost the heart of the genre. We’ve traded in our hacksaws for metaphors, and I, for one, refuse to do that. I will defend this movie to the death because it’s one of the few things left that still has the balls to be truly horrific.​

People are ignorant. They think that because something is gross, it’s easy. They think that because it’s violent, it’s dumb. But there is a spiritual core to the carnage in Terrifier. It’s a reminder that we are all just flesh and blood, and that there are things in the dark that think that’s hilarious.​

Final Thoughts

So, next time someone tries to tell you that Terrifier is just cheap schlock or that it’s degrading to women, do me a favor. Tell them to fuck off. Tell them to go watch a romantic comedy if they want to feel safe.

​Horror isn’t a “safe space”. It’s a slaughterhouse. And Art the Clown is the guy with the apron and a lot of sharp fucking tools in his bag.

The first film was just the beginning. It was the warning shot. It was Leone saying, “I’m here, and I’m not playing by your rules.” It’s the rawest, nastiest, most unapologetic slasher of the 21st century, and it deserves our respect—not because it’s important -which it absolutely fucking is – but because it’s real.​

It’s a flame burning bright in a sea of lukewarm studio garbage. And if you can’t handle the heat, stay out of the tenement.

​Because if you thought the first one was too much, you haven’t seen anything yet. Terrifier 2 takes everything we just talked about—the craft, the humor, the absolute refusal to play nice—and turns it up to eleven.