Control Review: Terrifier 2

I, Dalton Lewis, sit in my room at my computer. I have books on my computer — mostly mystery novels that I haven’t read. I want to try mysteries but haven’t managed to finish very many — it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe it’s not meant to be. I love procedural shows on television so i should love mystery novels, right? But that’s not what I’m reading right now. I’m reading Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis — it’s in front of the computer and I”m halfway done with reading the book — it’s about sex and debauchery among the rich kids in LA in the early 1980’s. I read fantasy, science fiction, and literature. So why don’t I write literature? Why don’t my stories resonate with the audiences? I don’t know. Below my monitor sits character cards for Marvel Crisis Protocol characters that sit somewhere lying around my room. I bought way too many of these characters, but I do play the game, so it’s better than the games people buy and never play. I have clippers and glue to put together wargaming miniatures. I’ve put together hundreds or thousands at this point and I’m still not very good at it. I don’t get much better — my hands aren’t perfect at putting them together. I drank from a glass that used to have Coca Cola Zero Sugar in it. A mug behind that has paint water in it. Tissues sit behind the paint water. A lamp is on the right side of the desk. I like a well-lit room. A couple dozen wargaming miniatures finish my desk, sitting around in various states of finished, unfinished, and painted. They are my world, those ridiculous games of toy soldiers, a hobby with which I am obsessed.

I am mentally ill. I am a crazy person working twice as hard to make it as a novelist. I have paranoid schizophrenia such that I rarely think about the world around me. I am a writer, a novelist. I get lots of reads but not a lot of sales — I’m struggling to write that one novel, that one iconic hit novel. In the meantime I’m writing the best work that I can possibly write and watching movies and reading good books. At this desk I have just watched The Terrifier 2. I am not a teenager any longer — I am in my forties — but I still feel like a kid when I see a good story about teenagers, and this, this is a good one.

The Terrifier 2 is a simple story: Art the clown, a serial killer, is back in town and wants to butcher people connected to pretty teen girl Sienna. Sienna wants to dress up for the Halloween party and get drunk with her girlfriends and take care of her little brother Jonathan. She wants to finish her costume, a Serra Angel-type costume which makes her look like a barely-dressed avenging angel out to kill Art the clown and save the town from his evildoings.

Simple.

Then there’s the spirit-girl who brought Art the clown back from the dead. She delights in his evil and supports him. She’s a foil for young Jonathan. Jonathan, Sienna’s little brother, is seen as a troubled, dangerous young man when he is, in fact, a good kid just trying to figure out his way in life. I liked him — normally little siblings are insufferable in these stories, but this one is likable and a good person.

An interesting scene happens when Sienna dreams of Art the clown burning a woman alive at a messed-up carnival food truck-type situation/musical — you have to see it — and then the dream fire leads to a real-life fire in her room. Her mom puts out the fire, which destroys her angel’s wings — symbolizing a descent from innocence. She has a sword given to her by her dad — her dad was mentally ill and dreamt that his daughter would be a vigilante.

Sienna has friends, friends who have brief scenes to develop their characters and then we get to see if they live or die. Brooke is a smart example of the lush friend — someone who cares and is smart and sassy and in control and yet loves drinking and sex.

This movie rocked my world way more than a slasher/horror movie called Terrifier 2 had any right to — it shouldn’t have moved me like this. I don’t know why — I enjoyed the simplicity of the story and the strength of the characters. I wanted to see something that resonated with me and found this — this movie resonated with me because the characters were flawed and relatable and human, and Art was fun and entertaining in his macabre and outrageous villainy.

This movie shows extreme gore and violence. It shows a clown who loves to commit gruesome acts of violence against people. This clown is a sick person who hurts so many people — it’s ridiculous and broken and disturbing. I think it’s making a point — saying something about violence and murder and art. I think that the point of it is to show the fake violence to express how horrible violence really is, how horrible and nasty it is, and to show how brutal murder can be. I think.

In the real world I have completed a draft of another novel, and this one is a fantasy novel retelling of the American Civil War. It’s long-ish for me, at 300 pages, and it’s ambitious, with a lot of characters and themes. I wish that I could create characters and scenes with the conflict and flawed people that the creator of Terrifier 2 can do.

The director creates wonderful characters you care about — and creates an insanely evil villain you can admire and respect. He isn’t some troubled benevolent person who’s mostly innocent. He’s evil beyond belief and admits it. That’s refreshing in a Disney world in which all the villains are hardly evil at all. That’s refreshing for a story to admit that some people are evil, just evil, and we need to acknowledge and fear these people.

I sit at home, on my laptop. I have a laptop now. I am in a chair in the living room. I don’t have any mess around me. My parents have cleaned it all up. I don’t know how or why they have done such a thing — how does one clean one’s area? I don’t understand this strange custom of cleaning one’s area. I need to learn and do it. I know that I will rewrite my novel, soon, and I want to rewrite it very well. I want to make it into something amazing and wonderful and scary and heartfelt and real and raw. I want people to read it and love it and respond to it. I want to write something amazing.

The Terrifier 2 is amazing. I recommend it if you like horror movies. It’s a marvelous story about a slasher villain against a final girl. It’s a marvelous story in which both sides are wonderful people we kind of root for and are amazed by. It’s a good movie. I hope that I can learn something from it for my own stories.

Thanks, and take care, friends.