Hold your nerve and your stomach: this gorefest is almost too good to pass out while watching it. Making headlines for apparently causing cinemagoers to faint and vomit, with an ambulance reportedly called to one screening, Terrifier 2 is not for everyone, but this tasteless wonder meets nauseating expectations. Blood, guts, molars and tendons fly across the screen with reckless abandon. No body part is safe from Art the Clown, a Pennywise on bath salts who treats the human body like a diamond-stuffed piñata, each blow and decapitation unearthing intestinal bounties and gushing reserves of liquid ruby.
In between scenes of bodily mutilation, there is a plot – just about. High school student Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) prepares a costume, designed by her late father, for a Halloween party. The night before, Sienna has a vivid dream in which she encounters a rampaging Art, fending him off with fire. For some reason, this also causes a fire in her bedroom. The following day, Sienna and those around her face the deranged clown in the flesh.
The creative ways bodies are hacked to bits is the film’s only truly inventive aspect. These scenes are long and unobscured. Victims are left wailing in pain as they become Art’s plaything. Despite the bloodshed, the impressive practical effects help ensure the film is absurd fun instead of outright cruel, more in the vein of The Evil Dead than the torture-porn of Saw.
The tacked-on commentary about the perils of unsupervised screen time and the gratuitous nature of true-crime entertainment, with namechecks for Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, are hardly original, and the runtime is at least 40 minutes too long, but the commitment of the cast, and jaw-dropping scenes of flesh being turned inside out makes Terrifier 2 catnip to a certain audience.
• Terrifier 2 is on digital platforms from 24 October.
