It’s a battle of the clowns here today as we take a look at two recent in the surprisingly relevant genre of murderous clowns. Whatever you can say about their relative qualities, both the Joker and Terrifier series are there to throw a wrench into the conventional wisdom about what makes a blockbuster franchise, and both have found much more success than anyone was expecting. Still, following up a big hit is no easy task, especially for the one that somehow made a billion dollars, so do these two sequels manage to outdo the originals, and which one does the most with its killer clown setup? Let’s find out!!
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Joker: Folie à Deux
Joker: Folie à deux is owned by Warner Bros Pictures
Directed by Todd Phillips
Hapless serial killer Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is not the man he used to be. His time in prison has sapped all the maniacal energy that he brought to his one and only TV appearance, and is simply waiting for his trial to be done with so he can sit in a corner until his execution. That is until he happens to pass by another inmate named Harley (Lady Gaga) who awakens the clown within and the two start planning for one heck of a legal defense. Will this be the grand finale to the revolution that he kicked off, or is there more going on in Arthur’s mind than what he paints on his face?
Like a lot of critics, I was no fan of the first film, which was a tedious slog through half-baked social commentary. I’m glad to report that the sequel is an improvement, by being a tedious slog through half-baked social commentary with a few song and dance numbers. Well, that’s a bit unfair, I suppose. The movie improves upon the original in several ways that don’t just include the singing and dancing, and it all has to do with the film’s tighter focus. Arthur Fleck in the first movie was a mere cipher as the film was more interested in trying to make a point, whatever that point ultimately was, rather than making it about Arthur himself. Gotham City wound up taking far too much space in the last one, and thankfully things have been stripped down significantly, as everything outside of Arthur’s immediate circumstances barely has a presence here; one that we can only glimpse through the bars of his cell or the gallery of the courtroom. I’d go so far as to say there’s barely more than three sets in the entire film, and while I can’t imagine how they spent two hundred million on this, I applaud them for making the sequel smaller instead of succumbing to Big Sequel Syndrome. This is all a great start and put me in a better mood than I was in the last film, but that goodwill started to fade away as the plot kicked in, and it’s just as boring and meandering this time around. It certainly tries to liven things up with the toxic relationship between Arthur and Harley as well as the more frequent flights into fantasy, and is almost enough to carry the movie; even outside the context of this being tangentially related to the DC Universe. For the most part I’m not bothered by how little this cares to be anything like the Batman characters, but I will say that it’s a little bit uncomfortable for this to essentially turn Harley, who is a victim of Joker’s abuse in all other forms of media, into the manipulative one. The last one had its issues with women and those aren’t improved here, which is a shame because Gaga remains a compelling actor even in material that isn’t up to her level, and I feel that her character is far too underwritten to have the impact that the film clearly expects it to have. The same is true about the musical numbers, which aren’t a detriment to the movie, but they add almost nothing to the movie. I think it was a good idea for the two of them to connect through music, but the numbers themselves are not interesting enough to justify stopping the plot in its tracks, and it’s just another thing that makes this feel way too drawn out. I don’t want to write off Todd Phillips as a boring filmmaker, but twice now he’s managed to fail to find the interesting story to tell about a killer clown. The big ideas and breathless monologues are for naught if you can barely keep your eyes open when you aren’t rolling them.
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Terrifier 3
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Terrifier 3 is owned by Cineverse
Directed by Damien Leone
Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) may have had his head chopped off at the end of the last movie, but when has a decapitation ever kept a good slasher villain down? Through very disturbing means, Art manages to regrow his head and gains an ally in Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi) who was the sole survivor of the first movie, but it is not time for them to continue Art’s reign of chaos, so they go into a deep sleep for five years; waking up just in time for the holiday season! This is bad news for the decapitator Sienna (Lauren LaVera) who has been in and out of mental hospitals since the event and is now staying with her aunt (Margaret Anne Florence) and her family (Bryce Johnson and Antonella Rose) while also checking in on her brother (Elliott Fullam) as the two are unconvinced of Art’s death. Once absurdly violent mayhem starts to strike the town, Sienna has no choice but to try and protect her family against the maniacal mime and whatever awful scheme he and Victoria have hatched. Will Sienna defeat this monster once and for all, or is she up against forces far beyond that of a simple serial killer with a funny gimmick?
I wonder if part of Terrifier 2’s success was from Joker fans realizing that something was missing from Todd Phillip’s first movie; namely, the whole horrifying-killer-clown aspect. As sick as I am of the Joker being in everything, I would actually give Warner Bros some credit if their sequel to the Matt Reeves Batman had a Joker as violent and hilariously wry as Art the Clown is in these movies. It’d also be true to the character, as Joker’s shtick is that no one thinks he’s funny, and these Terrifier films are starting to feel tedious. Now that’s not to say that this isn’t a fun slasher film, especially for those who are bored by what we’re getting in mainstream horror these days, but shock value is a finite resource and Terrifier blew most of its load in the last movie. Despite the attempts to up the ante with child murder in this one, the violence and gore feel overly familiar, and it just can’t reach the same high points of the last one. Still, Art as a malevolent force is still fantastic, and I probably had more fun watching him just be a dick to people as I did watching him smoosh their faces; something he does quite a bit in this, which means it can carry the movie on its shoulders. The rest of the film is more competent than the last one, but not as interesting. As janky as the story structure was in part two, there was a fantastical edge to it that feels somewhat lost here. Oh sure, they pull out some weird stuff for the finale, but there’s so much less of it to comb through compared to the last one, and like I said it never really tops what we got last time around in terms of violence and surprises. The ending is also a mixed bag, as it’s the one area where they try to do more with less instead of piling on the gore. The finale is rather small and aggressively disturbing, but I can’t say I liked it better than when it was trying to be over the top. As much as this franchise needs to calm down and find ways to be effective without endless buckets of meat chunks, I was never a big fan of the home invasion style horror movies that this one apes for its finale, and it was rather unpleasant to sit through; especially with the unsatisfying ending that’s more concerned with setting up the next sequel than anything else. Perhaps the movie should have built up to the more grotesque kills with a few smaller scale chilling scenes early on, but it’s all at a ten throughout and so it’s hard to even tell that we’re ramping up for the finale until it hits you in the face. While I would like a Terrifier movie to impress in a way that isn’t just hilariously bloodthirsty, I don’t think they pulled it off here, and it just feels like a smaller movie when compared to the last one. Perhaps bigger is better when your starting point is cutting a woman in half with a hacksaw, but it can’t seem to outdo the second one in either direction; leaving us with a decently put together, but ultimately lacking gore fest with a fun antagonist but little else to write home about.
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Both movies fail to live up to the hype of their predecessors despite making strides in the right direction, and while the latest Terrifier is a bigger step downwards than the latest Joker is a step up, Art walks the walk while Joker struggles to find its relevance. You can’t say that the Terrifier movies have a lot going on in their head, but they are fearless in a way that Todd Phillips isn’t, and I’d rather go with the jankier version of anarchic excess than the slick and polished version any day.
The Reviewers Unite 