Warning: This contains potentially distressing discussions of murder and torture, including sexual violence.
While Art the Clown racks up an impressive body count in Terrifier 2, the slasher villain’s worst kill doesn’t take place in the successful sequel. Terrifier 2 has scared up a massively impressive box office performance, becoming the latest 2022 horror movie to prove the profitable genre is excelling at multiplexes. However, not all of Terrifier 2’s publicity has been positive despite the independent slasher sequel’s staggering $7.9 million take.
Both viewers and reviewers alike have taken issue with the graphic violence featured throughout Terrifier 2, a gory splatter movie that takes its death scenes a lot further than more modest horror movies would. Despite reports of moviegoers fainting and passing out, however, Terrifier 2 isn’t even the site of Art the Clown’s nastiest kill ever. In 2016’s Terrifier, Art the Clown slowly cuts a bound woman in half with a hacksaw, beginning between her open legs and ending with her still-screaming head. It is one of the most legitimately upsetting sequences in recent horror history and far outstrips anything featured in 2022’s comparatively goofy Terrifier 2.
Art the Clown's Nastiest Kill Ever Explained
Every movie featuring Art the Clown is a distinctly adults-only affair, and both Terrifier movies more than live up to the promise of their titles. However, Terrifier is significantly nastier than its successor, as proven by Dawn’s almost unwatchable death scene. Dawn is a friend of Terrifier’s (apparent) heroine, Tara. She goads Art the Clown into taking a selfie with her when the pair first encounter him in a pizza place, a gesture that soon leads Art to abduct her. While Tara is forced to watch, Art graphically cut a nude Dawn in half with a hacksaw in agonizingly slow detail.
The scene is distinctly unpleasant because of its surprising length, its convincing gore effects, and the decision not to cut away from the gory carnage. However, Terrifier 2 is even gorier so, clearly, it is not just blood and guts that makes Dawn’s death so chilling. What makes this Terrifier kill so much scarier than its sequel counterparts is the fact that the scene is grounded in relative reality compared to the sequel’s action. When Art the Clown kills Dawn, he seems like an ordinary (if well-prepared and very strong) serial killer and, when he swiftly kills Tara shortly afterwards, it seems as if no one stands a chance against the unhinged monster.
Why Terrifier 2 Toned Down Terrifier's Darkness
In Terrifier 2, Art the Clown is an explicitly supernatural, super-strong being that can bend the rules of reality, resulting in splatter gore that is shocking but not particularly rooted in realism. Art the Clown changed between movies, which was necessitated by Terrifier’s closing scenes explicitly confirming that Art was something more than human. In making Art a less human menace, Terrifier 2 took the franchise in a fantasy horror direction, meaning that even its nastiest violence felt less realistic and impactful. Art even gained a seemingly demonic sidekick in Terrifier 2 and ends up being defeated by a Final Girl who magically revives herself, meaning the slasher sequel’s nastiness quotient couldn’t compare to its more grounded predecessor.