What are your thoughts on the Terrifier series?

First of all, I just want to say that I'm not surprised that it gets such bad reviews online (or at least that's how it looked to me), because the creators were basically only focusing on shock value. I think it would be pretty hard to make a clown that's scarier looking than Art. The "scary clown" is a fairly pervasive idea in american culture, and I congratulate the ingenuity of making a scary mime-clown. One review site online talks about the "lack of depth" but the series obviously isn't about that.

They are definitely not my favorite movies, but they are fun to watch. I felt 2 dragged on a little bit too much, my favorite is probably 3. The decision to add the immortality element like in the Halloween series is interesting, I guess that makes it more purposefully unpleasant for viewers. Do you think there's going to be 10+ Terrifier movies, that kinda seems to be what's going on here.

Feel free to discuss the non-movie elements of the series. I am enthralled.

Pretty sure DL said in an interview somewhere he's planning to wrap it all up in the 4th movie.

As a general rule, I think of the ability to generate shock as less of a skill or (forgive the pun) art, and more of a choice. In other words, a lot of things that get attention for being shocking are not things nobody else could have made, but things nobody else was willing to make. So I generally find them less valuable and less compelling.

Even when the "shock" moments are in movies from, say, Luis Buñuel or Peter Greenaway?

Art The Clown isn't necessarily "scary looking", it's what he can do and DOES do that makes him terrifying.That being said, I prefer 2 over the others. The bedroom scene in that one will never be topped.

__________________

No, which is why I mentioned it was a "general rule" and said I "generally" find them less valuable.

Art can shock. Sometimes it has to. But not everything shocking is meaningful or valuable art. And when it is, it is not art merely because it shocks people, but because it is a means to a some greater end. An end other than "please notice me, Hollywood" or whatever.

Ok to each their own and what not, I actually saw someone in a very realistic Art the Clown costume walking about on Halloween, and I can tell you for a fact that if I ever ran into someone who looked like that on any night that wasn't Halloween, he'd scare the bejesus out of me.

The bedroom scene was definitely the most unpleasant with the highest shock value, what annoyed me about that whole movie was the fight scenes in the amusement park, that was mostly just boring to me. I liked 3 the best because it was a long movie but it didn't feel long at all (kind of like the movies in the Godfather movie, even though I don't like Terrifier as much).

Since DL wants to wrap the whole thing up in 4, I will gladly watch that one as well: you can almost guarantee that a terrifier movie will not bore you to the point of stopping part of the way through.

I disagree: shock value is a social engineering talent and requires bravery/stupidity. I don't get the whole movies for prestige angle. Movies with original social commentary are pretty amazing (not present in Terrifier, but very present in "Poor Things" which is one of the movies of the 20's IMO).

Still haven't seen the third one, but I really liked the first one. Simple and visceral. The sequel improves on many things, but also suffers from being overblown and bloated, which is the contrary to what I liked about the first one (read my review here). Still liked it, but not as much as the first one.

__________________

Bravery/stupidity are traits, sometimes valuable ones, but they aren't "talent." That's kind of my point: creating art purely for shock is more a choice than a skill.

I also wonder at the "bravery" part, since it seems that almost everyone creating shock art is an outsider trying to get noticed, with very little to lose. And in fact that seems to largely be why they do it: to get attention (hence the "please notice me, Hollywood" thing I mentioned in my previous post).

I don't really follow how this connects to the rest of the discussion, except that "prestige" art is, I guess, being treated as the inverse of shock art.

Would you say Poor Things is shocking for its own sake, or shocking to some other end?

I respect* Leone for doing what he wants and turning down the studio money to keep himself in complete control. That being said, I don't particularly like the films (1 and 3 are borderline bad, in my opinion).

*Part of that respect was lost after 3rd film where practically all violence towards children happens off screen

__________________

I didn't say that bravery and stupidity are talents, I said social engineering is. I'm not trying to argue that shock value is inherently good, but trying to divorce it entirely from "art" seems silly to me, which is where my "prestige" comment comes in: art can basically be any form of creativity (but often just refers to visual art like paintings etc.).

Not to be confused with "art the clown", lol... even though that is undeniably an example of art.

I do not believe in "real art", even though I personally think art is about doing something original for the sake of doing something original, and the less original and more contrived, the less I personally consider it "art". For example, if i go and tell A.I. to make me an image, I can take credit for the idea, but not any of the processes involved in the creation of the image beyond my prompt.

I think to a certain degree, all movie makers are employing the "please notice me" approach, and the cost of doing movie makes just "doing art for art sake" less appealing, and adds a financial incentive for shock value. Doing something for shock value does require a small or large amount of bravery IMO, because you're intentionally dredging up things you know are going to bother people. However, I think after they made the first "Terrifier", the other ones don't require any bravery because they could then be mostly sure that nobody is going to try the gruesome stuff in the film (at least, not to the people who made it...)

I can't comment on the motives for making a movie just from watching it (re:Poor Things). I think they would have to be delusional if they saw themselves as activists with a movie like that, but if they were trying to get people to talk about the issues brought up in the movie then I wouldn't be surprised and they probably did a good job.

I tried to watch the first one, and nearly fell asleep. I don't remember the clown guy killing anyone for like thirty or forty minutes, and it didn't keep me interested so I turned it off. Naturally it could have just been ten bad minutes that felt like forty boring minutes though I can't say for sure. I thought about watching it again and then I decided shock horror isn't my thing so I decided to watch anything else. "Look at me! I did something grotesque!" Good for you? Knowing special effects doesn't make you a talented writer/director...

__________________
I destroyed the dastardly dairy dame! I made mad milk maid mulch!
He hid in the forest, read books with great zeal
He loved Che Guevera, a revolutionary veal
Cow Tse Tongue

I personally think that was just part a way to keep viewers guessing as to which child it was, i believe that character was supposed to be at least 18 (so not actually a child...). I thought that was clever, to tell you the truth.

EDIT: took me a second to remember which child you are talking about, at the beginning of the movie.

I'm talking about the opening scene (and to a lesser degree the mall scene). I have no idea what scene you're referring to with the "at least 18" comment.

The apparent death of jonathan, because i thought you were referring to that at first.

Anyway, I wasn't, obviously, referring to that.

"obviously"...

There still wasn't any conclusive evidence that the make believe evil clowns were honest the second time...

I'm confused. What does any of this have to do with "violence towards children happens off-screen"?