Horror author Stephen King seemed to damn Terrifier sequel has already grossed more than $10 million domestically and shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.
Stephen King praised Art the Clown's latest outing, with the author taking to social media to post a succinct encapsulation of Terrifier 2’s appeal. “Terrifier 2: Grossin’ you out old school,” he wrote. While the sardonic comment doesn’t sound too complimentary, King’s nonfiction book Danse Macabre features a comment from the author that reveals its secret significance. While King views “terror” and “horror” as purer, more irable goals for the genre artist, he concedes that "gross-out" also has a place at the table — something that the outsized success of Terrifier 2 has loudly reaffirmed in recent weeks.
Stephen King On Gross-Out Horror
In his nonfiction book on the art of horror, Danse Macabre, Stephen King its that he aims to induce terror — the unique feeling of unknowable, overwhelming fear — in his readers, but just as often he settles for horror, which is the more pedestrian, but still thrilling, feeling of fearing something all too tangible. Terrifier 2’s The Little Pale Girl, with her mysterious backstory and unsettling distance from Art the Clown’s grisly crimes, fits the bill for King’s description of horror. She is deeply creepy and, since she is not actively involved in committing the visceral carnage of the slasher sequel, this paradoxically makes the secondary Terrifier 2 villain even scarier.
However, Art the Clown is the star of Terrifier 2, and there is nothing subtle or abstract about what makes the slasher villain scary. This is where King’s analysis of the genre comes in. After outlining terror and horror, King concedes he is also not averse to pure gross-out when neither terror nor horror is achievable. The author its that there is a place for what he refers to as gross-out (pure gore, body horror, and gruesome shocks), which the rapturous reception of Art the Clown’s horrifying kills proves to be true. Gross-out horror has not been overly popular since the advent of the so-called “elevated horror” trend, making Terrifier 2’s success an intriguing watershed.
Terrifier 2’s Gross-Out Horror Explained
Even more than its darker predecessor, Terrifier 2 leans into gory gross-out content as much as genuine scares. While the sequel is still very scary, Terrifier 2 is not as dark and bleak as Terrifier and is more interested in shocking viewers with its hilarious gore than the more grounded and nastier first Terrifier was. Where Terrifier featured scenes of uncomfortably drawn-out torture and dismemberment, Terrifier 2 features blissfully unaware trick-or-treaters eating candy out of a hollowed-out human head. This style of gross-out horror, which combines shock value, dark humor, and ambitious effects to create a grisly but funny atmosphere has not been seen too much in recent years, which goes some way to explaining Terrifier 2’s success.
King’s Comment Encapsulates Terrifier 2’s Appeal
The Smile spend most of their screen time on introspective character studies, throwing a handful of gruesome moments into lengthy dramas about troubled people gradually succumbing to the darkness inside them. In contrast, hits like Terrifier 2 offer a wholly different form of horror.
While thoughtful slow-burn horror has a place in the genre, the appeal of Terrifier 2 is its commitment to non-stop, gross-out gore. By far the silliest of Barbarian — another recent hit that was unafraid of leaning into the horror genre’s sillier excesses — and a pattern becomes clear. Like Barbarian, Terrifier 2 is bringing back the gross-out horror that viewers missed out on when the genre attempted to gain more critical legitimacy, and the slasher is winning over fans as a result.
