11 Things About The Terrifier Series That Make No Sense

If you haven’t seen the “Terrifier” movies, all you might know about its signature killer, Art the Clown (usually played by David Howard Thornton), is that he’s yet another use of the coulrophobia trope in horror movies. From Stephen King’s “It” to “Killer Klowns From Outer Space” and “Clownhouse,” there’s a long tradition of using clowns for horror (we even have a list of some of the best creepy clown movies you’ve probably never seen). 

Art, however, is not just another maniac in greasepaint. His saga is much more complicated and far less straightforward than that of many other slasher killers. Indeed, his movies frequently employ a sort of dream logic, the result of writer-director Damien Leone being a huge fan of David Lynch.

So when we talk about things that don’t necessarily make sense in the “Terrifier” saga, it’s more a case of them not making sense in any real-world way. Art isn’t quite bound by our conventional rules of reality, and after throwing a few things at the metaphorical wall to see what stuck, Leone is now in a place where he has mapped out the saga and kept some revelations deliberately withheld for now. It’s possible that some aspects of the existing films will make more sense later on, but for now, here our some of our biggest questions, along with the best attempts at answering them within the surreal world that they operate.

This one’s complicated, as it varies movie-to-movie. In Leone’s short film “The 9th Circle,” Art appears to be human. The only vaguely supernatural thing about him is a scene where his eyes glow, and that plays like a drug-induced hallucination, though glowing eyes will become a signature evil power of The Little Pale Girl later in the franchise. 

In the short film version of “Terrifier,” Art has the ability of most slasher villains to easily catch up to his victims even if they’re traveling much faster. That’s allowable artistic license, but Leone specifically calls it teleportation on the Blu-ray commentary track. In “All Hallow’s Eve,” which incorporates both shorts and adds more, the mere appearance of Art in a painting is enough to doom a young woman to death, albeit at the hands of an alien. Likewise, the appearance of Art on a videotape allows him, “Ringu”-style, to enter a home and kill the children inside. These powers are never explained.

In the first “Terrifier” feature, Art is mostly just a strong and clever psychopath, though he seems to possess an amazing ability to hide weapons in costume. This still falls within most acceptable movie-reality parameters. It’s only at the end, when he comes back to life after blowing his own brains out, that he reveals supernatural abilities. “Terrifier” 2 ups the ante to a biblical level, revealing he’s the chosen champion of evil.

Confused? Keep reading…

Art is taken aback by his own resurrection, but he recognizes an opportunity for more killing. That’s when The Little Pale Girl (Amelie McLain) shows up. A terrifying apparition who looks like a ghost girl cosplaying as mini-Art, she’s equally silent and gets his attention by defecating chunky black bile. After that, she heals his wounded eye with a touch. But who or what is she?

According to Leone on the commentary, she is the embodiment of the evil force that resurrected Art. She exists in some sort of “middle dimension” where the laws of physics may not apply, and she can only be seen (so far) by Art and his intended victims Sienna and Jonathan. Throughout “Terrifier 2,” she’s the one who guides Art to Sienna’s friends, so he can kill them one by one and ultimately destroy Sienna, who is the chosen champion of good.

But wait! Per the scrapbook kept by Jonathan, she’s a dead ringer (pun intended) for 10 year-old Emily Crane, the daughter of two circus performers found dead and mangled in a makeup trailer outside the local carnival grounds. Why the unnamed greater evil force chose her remains unknown, as do the circumstances surrounding her death. By the end of the movie, as indicated by a signature glowing-eye effect (and confirmed by Leone’s commentary), the evil force has left its Emily body and entered Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi), the facially mutilated survivor of the first “Terrifier.”

The first “Terrifier” fits the basic slasher mold pretty well. Victims are stalked by a mad killer with a unique gimmick, he picks them off one by one, and he’s finally defeated at the end, only to show signs that he’ll be resurrected again somehow for the sequel. In said sequel, however, the resurrected Art is now the avatar for cosmic forces of evil, pitted against teenager Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera), who has been chosen by the forces of good to be their champion against Art. What these greater forces are, we don’t know — Leone never refers to God or Satan, though he does, on commentary, refer to Sienna as Christ-like and talks about the hero’s journey.

So why the turn to such elaborate mythology for the bigger, weirder, bloodier sequel, especially when most of the series’ notoriety comes from its particularly brutal kill scenes rather than its plot? The shift certainly keeps things unpredictable, but the answer is probably rooted in the original “The 9th Circle” short, in which Art served a subterranean coven of demons by drugging women and bringing them below to be impregnated by Satanic figures. Leone wanted to make a “9th Circle” feature initially but found audiences responded more to Art. Sienna, a character based on Leone’s sisters, would have fought the demons in such a movie. Instead, Leone seems to have found a way to incorporate most of that material into the “Terrifier” series.

Generally, the events of “All Hallow’s Eve,” which includes the shorts “Terrifier” and “The 9th Circle,” are not considered canon to the two “Terrifier” features. They have a different actor for Art (Mike Gianelli) and depict plot points that feel like first drafts for ideas later used in the “Terrifier” movies. The notion of Art serving Satan, the mutilated face makeup, Art wrecking a bathroom, and the foreshadowing of a picture of Art all get recycled by Leone, and Katie Maguire, who plays the babysitter, resurfaces in “Terrifier” as a TV host. It’s also worth noting that the events depicted in “All Hallow’s Eve” are’t ever mentioned in the “Terrifier” films thus far. Alien abduction, for one, would be a pretty big deal to ignore.

That said, there’s nothing to say they can’t be canon. Sure, Art has powers here — like manifesting from a videotape — that he never uses again. Arguably, though, these could be side quests. They don’t actively contradict events in the ‘Terrifier” films, but they might merely suggest that Art repeats himself. On the other hand, according to producer Jesse Baget, the events of “All Hallow’s Eve” and its two Art-free anthology sequels are canon to each other, and they take place in a shared universe. So even Art exists in a multiverse?

All the great slasher killers have formative reasons for doing what they do. Freddy Krueger is out for revenge on the parents who killed him, Jason’s mad at anyone resembling the lifeguards who let him down, and Leatherface just wants some good chili. So how and why does Art the Clown choose who he’s going to kill?

It seems to vary movie to movie. In “All Hallow’s Eve,” his murders and methods are effectively random. In the first “Terrifier,” he chooses his primary targets based on the fact that they’ve either made fun of him (Dawn with her selfies) or otherwise disrespected him, like the pizzeria owner’s completely justified reaction to Art’s bathroom vandalism. Anyone in the way is also fair game. Art’s kills tend to be especially gory, because he likes the torment to last as long as possible, so he can mock the victims’ pain.

In “Terrifier 2,” he’s guided to his victims by The Little Pale Girl, though he doesn’t necessarily know why — he’s just having fun with it, acting weird until they lose patience with him, and then taking violent revenge of sorts. What The Little Pale Girl knows, however, is that these are all the friends and family of Sienna, the chosen one whom Art must destroy. By taking out her loved ones first, the idea is that Art will break her down emotionally before the killing blow.

There’s a moment in the first “Terrifier” that Leone has specifically called out as foreshadowing, though he never paid it off in the sequel. It’s when Art encounters a character called the Cat Lady (Pooya Mohseni), who cradles a baby doll like it’s her child. Art lets her touch him, then adopts a fetal position as she holds him and he sucks his thumb.

Without spilling the significance, on the commentary track, Leoneasks Art actor David Howard Thornton what he thinks is going on. Thornton ultimately decides that while Art is partly mocking her, there are also some real mommy issues there. Leone neither confirms nor denies. Later in the film, of course, we find that Art has ripped the Cat Lady’s skin off and is wearing it as a costume.

So what is the deal with Art’s mom? Art uses the tactics of multiple serial killers, and in this case appears to be mimicking Ed Gein. Is it just an impersonation? The director clearly knows, but he isn’t telling … yet.

“Terrifier” is a movie with an extremely simple story: an evil clown stalks his victims through a mostly empty building at night. So why does it need to be told in a nonlinear fashion that’s more likely to confuse than not? The vast majority of the movie turns out to be a year-old flashback, while the disfigured woman who violently attacks her TV interviewer at the beginning turns out to be Victoria, the survivor of the film’s primary events.

In all likelihood, it comes down to two things. The first is pacing, as it lets the movie open with a brutal act of violence while still allowing for a slow-build with Art himself. The second is likely intended to confound audience expectations as to who the “final girl” will be. In many slashers, it’s obvious who will survive to defeat the monster. Leone fakes us out twice, first by making us think Tara (Jenna Kannell) will fill that role, only to have her killed off halfway through as her sister Vicky shows up. The second time, which is really only possible with a cast of unknowns, is when the disfigured woman turns out to actually be Vicky, and we’re shocked by the realization that the heroic final girl has herself become a murderer.

Of course, one could argue that both those surprises would still work if Leone didn’t reveal Victoria upfront. 

It sounds weird to call anything in a “Terrifier” movie unnecessarily disgusting, especially when that’s part of the point of the movies. Horror viewers certainly expect gore, but they may not have expected the image of a bathroom into which Art has clearly emptied the entire contents of his colon, smearing feces all over the walls and writing his name in it. Perhaps more impressively, he comes out with a completely clean costume, despite no evidence of having used the equally smeared sink in there.

One thing Leone specifically likes, which he has mentioned repeatedly, is to show Art dealing with mundane details that would never trip up the likes of Jason or Freddy. In the first film, this means him taking a huge dump, and in the second, it means laundering his costume. The Little Pale Girl can heal his wounds, but he still needs a washing machine for his clothes. So why no poop stains on his outfit in the first film? He’s not supernaturally powered until his first resurrection, but perhaps his outfit is, somehow.

Throughout “Terrifier 2,” we learn various tidbits about Sienna’s father. He’s dead, he was an artist, he was abusive, and before he committed suicide, he drew pictures of Art the Clown and gave Sienna a sword that he knew she would need one day. That’s a whole lot of plot convenience, at least if you don’t listen to the commentary.

As Leone describes it, Sienna’s father was a vessel for the forces of good, who knew he would bring forth their champion and make her the weapon she needed. When his mind was opened to the good visions, however, the evil force crept in as well, giving him visions of Art, making him abusive, and causing internal conflict that manifested itself as a tumor. His suicide was an essential sacrifice to keep the evil from taking him over completely. That’s a whole lot more exposition that would probably have lengthened the film even more — it’s already 138 minutes, so it’s probably best left to a future film to fully explain.

The fact that he was an artist does explain Sienna’s name, however, which, per Leone, was inspired by Bob Ross’ favorite paint color, burnt sienna. So why does her brother have a boring name like Jonathan?

Sienna first encounters Art in a dream on the set of a surreal kiddie TV show called “The Clown Cafe.” After Art murders all the extras, she must crawl through the set, reach into a cereal box filled with glass and razor blades, and find the “prize” inside — her father’s sword. Art attacks her with a flamethrower, she blocks the fire with the sword, and then she wakes up to find her Halloween costume on fire, though the sword emerges completely unblemished.

Due to its obvious similarities to scenes in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” sequels (Leone’s childhood heroes were Freddy and Jason), it’s easy to assume that Art is using Freddy Krueger-like powers to invade Sienna’s dreams. Knowing that fans would think that way, Leone reluctantly explains on the commentary track that it’s the opposite — the forces of good sent the dream to test Sienna. That wasn’t the real Art, but more of a vision like Darth Vader on Dagobah in “Empire Strikes Back,” to see if Sienna has what it takes to face him down. She proves her worth by grabbing the sword, and when she uses it to block Art’s fire, that’s the sword becoming baptized. Only in that moment does it become the magic weapon that can kill Art. That the baptism by fire extends to the real world is simply proof of its power and significance.

Art’s regenerative powers are tricky. Though he sustains damage the way a sturdy human would during the first film, he comes back from the dead at the end, despite a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Notably, though, he does not regrow his brain or his eye until he meets The Little Pale Girl, and she lays hands on him.

From there, he’s basically indestructible in “Terrifier 2,” coming back from what ought to be fatal injuries more than once. Now that he has been resurrected as an avatar of evil, he can only be defeated by the avatar of good, which is Sienna. Or rather, it is Sienna eventually, as she too must be resurrected to fully level up, after taking a deadly stab from her own weapon and seemingly drowning in a Houdini-style water chamber. Per Leone’s commentary, it’s part of the rules that her own weapon cannot kill her, and that Art can only kill her in the Terrifier haunted house, which stands atop a portal to Hell.

Ergo, when it’s Art who is beheaded by the sacred weapon in the designated place, it counts as a real kill that he can’t simply regenerate from. The real question is how the evil force can just cheat by giving birth to a fully alive Art head shortly thereafter. If Sienna died, would she get a similarly gross path to rebirth?

It’ll be interesting to see how these mysteries continue to evolve with the arrival of “Terrifier 3” this year.