Terrifier 2 director talks terrorizing audiences with his horror sequel: "We really did swing for the fences"

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Exclusive: Damien Leone tells SFX all about the new horror movie that reportedly has audiences "fainting" and "vomiting"

Terrifier 2
(Image credit: Signature Entertainment)

Some nine years after he first hacked and slashed his way onto cinema screens, serial killer Art the Clown (embodied with maniacal glee by David Howard Thornton) is back. In Terrifier 2 he has returned to stalk and slash his way through the town of Miles County once more in director Damien Leone’s bigger, bolder, and altogether bloodier sequel –just ask the audience members "vomiting" after screenings.

This return should come as no surprise to fans who saw Art unnaturally spring back to life in the closing moments of the first film. "I figured that it’s sort of inevitable that if we’re going to continue making these films that Art would eventually have to become supernatural," Leone tells SFX in the new issue of the magazine, featuring Halloween Ends on the cover. "All of the great slashers eventually do. You can’t get to part eight of a series, or whatever, without having sustained several death blows! So I thought, instead of waiting for that, let’s jump into it."

But why is the killer clown back and what does he want? "This time he’s targeting this girl named Sienna [Lauren LaVera] and her younger brother Jonathan [Elliott Fullam], who has become obsessed with Art. There’s a supernatural entity, this force that’s sort of driving Art toward the siblings – but there’s a supernatural force that’s kind of aiding them as well, especially Sienna."

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Terrifier 2 takes everything that fans loved about the first film (and its gruesome 2013 predecessor All Hallows’ Eve) and dials it up by an insane degree. This is a staggeringly violent movie. We ask if Leone felt any pressure to top the infamous scene from Terrifier where a character is graphically bisected with a hacksaw.

"Absolutely. It seemed like our duty to at least try and come close to that. When we were making the first film, I knew that it might get lost in a sea of thousands of other films. I thought, ‘We have to show things that Hollywood may not necessarily have the balls to do!’ And now people have tattoos of that scene! For Terrifier 2, it was a little nerve-wracking. There are only so many ways you can dissect a human being! But we really did swing for the fences. There’s maybe triple the amount of kills and, like, four really hardcore set-pieces."

Making these elaborately gnarly scenes is a personal passion for Leone, who has been creating make-up effects from a young age. "My producer Phil Falcone and I did 99% of the effects in the whole film," he says. "I’ve been doing effects since I was 12, but Phil’s just got into it and he’s really good! So it was mostly us building everything."

That includes Art’s make-up, which Leone personally still applies to David Howard Thornton every day. "We’ve got it down pretty fast now. It used to take me around three hours, but now we’ve switched up the material. Towards the end of this I was able to do it in half the time. So that’s been excellent."

For more on Terrifier 2 pick up the Halloween Ends issue of SFX Magazine, available on newsstands now. For even more from SFX, sign up to the newsletter, sending all the latest exclusives straight to your inbox.

Will Salmon
Will Salmon
Streaming Editor

Will Salmon is the Streaming Editor for GamesRadar+. He has been writing about film, TV, comics, and music for more than 15 years, which is quite a long time if you stop and think about it. At Future he launched the scary movie magazine Horrorville, relaunched Comic Heroes, and has written for every issue of SFX magazine for well over a decade. His music writing has appeared in The Quietus, MOJO, Electronic Sound, Clash, and loads of other places too.