Latest news with #ArtTheClown
Gizmodo
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
‘Terrifier 4' Will Finally Dig Deep into Art the Clown's Origins
Terrifier franchise filmmaker Damien Leone was on hand to meet fans at the recent Texas Frightmare Weekend. During the event, the director of the upcoming Terrifier 4 chatted with horror vlogger and pop culture commentator 3C and gave the channel quite a scoop. When asked to describe Terrifier 4 in a word, Leone told 3C, 'I know this word gets used a lot, but it's going to be epic, it's not going to disappoint.' The highly anticipated next installment will continue Art the Clown's (David Howard Thorton) slasher rampage through Miles County. And to hype up the film even more, he told 3C, 'You're going to get Art's backstory in the first 15 minutes.' Many fans have speculated that Art's origins might hold the key to defeating him once and for all. But where's the fun in that? We'd like to see him continue on reeking bloody havok with in his full gleeful gory glory. Earlier this year Leone expressed gratitude to his fans on his birthday with a post on X that read, 'Figure I'd give you a present in return! The script for Terrifier 4 is in the works and it's shaping up to be a most epic, thrilling, nasty, horrifying, emotional and utterly satisfying conclusion. P.s., I will finally reveal Art's origin.'
Geek Tyrant
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Art the Clown Goes Academic: TERRIFIER Horror Franchise Getting Its Own Scholarly Conference — GeekTyrant
That's right! Art the Clown is officially entering academia. Move over, Shakespeare and Hitchcock, because the Terrifier franchise is now being treated as an object of scholarly importance. The University of Warwick in the UK is hosting the first-ever Terrifier academic conference in 2025, and yes, this is a real thing. According to a press release from Signature Entertainment, The Terrifier Conference 2025 'will welcome global scholars to Warwick to take an alternative approach to enthusiastic critical dismemberment by engaging with the Terrifier film franchise as an object of scholarly importance.' The conference aims to dig into the series' gloriously over-the-top use of horror tropes, from how women are portrayed in the genre, to the use of practical gore, the influence of religion, and, of course, the 'unsettling visual creepiness' of Art himself. Scholars from Brazil, France, the U.S., and beyond will bring their brains to bear on a franchise best known for, well, removing brains. And while the in-person conference runs Saturday, May 3, one day will be streamed online internationally on Friday, May 2, so even if you're nowhere near the UK, you can still get in on the blood-spattered academia. Born from a 2011 short, Damien Leone's Terrifier has morphed into one of horror's most outrageous modern success stories. With Art the Clown, played with sadistic glee by David Howard Thornton, taking center stage, the franchise went from cult curiosity to box office beast. Terrifier 3 alone raked in $90.3 million worldwide on just a $2 million budget. Each film pushes the boundaries a little further, and Terrifier 2 introduced us to fan-favorite final girl Sienna (Lauren LaVera), and Terrifier 3 traded Halloween for a twisted take on Christmas. While Terrifier 4 doesn't have a release date yet, it's rumored to be the blood-soaked finale. Also happening at the conference, Signature Entertainment's Head of Publicity will be leading a seminar on the viral marketing strategies behind Terrifier 3 's surprise domination in the UK and Ireland. Spoiler alert: gore sells. So yeah… Art the Clown, college lecturer. What a time to be alive (unless you're in Miles County).
The Guardian
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Clown in a Cornfield review – perky yet run-of-the-mill slasher fare
One would be forgiven for assuming there was a lot more to early summer slasher Clown in a Cornfield other than, well, a clown in a cornfield. Because ever since an inevitable premiere at SXSW in March, an impressively maintained buzz has followed – special drive-in screenings, an ambitiously wide release, the bullish positioning of a New Horror Icon – giving us enough naive hope that in an overcrowded genre (there's estimated to be double the amount of wide release horrors this year compared to 2024), this one might be worthy of the hype. But the film, which was picked up by ever-growing horror streamer Shudder at the end of last year, would have been a wiser choice for a small screen premiere, a late-night weekend couch watch that feels a little too modest for the multiplex. The expansive rollout will likely have been triggered by the surprise success of last year's Art the Clown sequel Terrifier 3 which made a staggering $90m worldwide from a $2m budget (it was released the month before Clown in a Cornfield was purchased). As small and junky as those films might be, they're distinguished by a throughline of ghoulishly inventive ultra-gore, a throwback to the kind of video nasty violence that would worry and repulse parents, the act of seeing the films then carrying with it an air of juvenile rebellion. There's nothing here to warrant such concern, no real sense of danger to be conjured, Clown in a Cornfield content to be a perfectly watchable, if mostly mechanical, production line slasher. 'It's like we're in some awful 80s slasher horror movie!' one of the anonymous sub-Scream characters says at one point. Yes whatever your name is, it really is! It's based on Adam Cesare's YA novel from 2020, centered on a classic subgenre archetype – the smart dark-haired girl with a dead mum – as she moves to a new town with father (Hannibal's Aaron Abrams). Quinn (Katie Douglas, giving young Cristin Milioti energy) is, of course, loathed to relocate from the big city of Philadelphia to the small town of Kettle Springs, a rural dead zone haunted by the reminder of what it once was, when its corn syrup factory brought employment and business to the townsfolk. But she soon finds herself a tribe – a group of rule-breaking YouTubing high schoolers – and a slowly evolving love triangle between a gruff kid from the wrong side of the tracks and the well-to-do son of the mayor. There is, however, a clown in a cornfield, ready to ruin her fun. The clown is named Frendo, a bastardisation of the town's one-time mascot, this time far less friendly and far more carrying a chainsaw. It's a character the teens have been using in their prank videos, faking attacks that have made them a target of the fatigued sheriff. But now, Frendo is real and he's picking them off one by one, in and out of the cornfield. There are some appreciated tweaks to the formula here, attempts to update what could have easily just been an '80s slasher horror movie' but with smartphones. But they mostly come within a busy last act, a little too late, given how run-of-the-mill the majority of the film before that can be. The script, from Carter Blanchard and director Eli Craig, might have its roots in YA but the characters are as weakly etched and indistinguishable as they would be in any other old sleepover slasher. It's only really in that final act when the we can see the source material, in a neat and genuinely surprising queer twist far more interesting and subversive than anything related to the cut-and-paste lead. The big reveal, while illogically daft, does have a certain on-paper thematic novelty to it but it's cursedly both over-explained and hard-to-really-understand, a 'why are you doing this?' response that rambles into nonsense. Perhaps the majority of Friday night teens aren't going to Clown in a Cornfield for plot specifics but even as a more base slasher, it just doesn't have enough to make it remarkable. Frendo is just some clown, never given all that much to separate him from the many other horror clowns we know better, and while the deaths are certainly grisly, they're interchangeable. There's definitely a clown in that cornfield but there's precious little else. Clown in a Cornfield is out in US and UK cinemas on 9 May
