Director Damien Leone is no slouch. Certainly, better horror movies have been released in the year 2022, but none as tastelessly brilliant and creative as Leone’s Terrifier 2, and none that will make as lasting an impression.

Following up his 2016 original, Leone crowdfunded the sequel through Indiegogo, with promises of resurrecting the iconic Art The Clown for another round of urder and mayhem. And out of loyalty to his investors, Leone more than delivers on the final product. At 140 minutes, Terrifier 2 is perhaps the longest slasher flick ever made, and the madness does not end there. In fact, “restraint” is not a word that enters this film’s vocabulary.

So what makes this slasher different from all other slashers?

Terrifier 2 Encourages Other Horror to Try Harder

Terrifier 2 Art the Clown
Dread Central Presents

Terrifier 2 exists at an odd intersection of comic splatter-fest and upsetting torture porn. An example of the former would be Peter Jackson’s ridiculous movie Dead Alive, which, in some circles, holds the mantle for goriest movie ever made (at least up to this point); in that film exists a partial blueprint for the Terrifier model in that it is absolutely nauseating, and yet it still feels like a broad comedy that does not really get under the skin.

The Saw films, on the torture-porn end, were so dreadfully serious all the way through that, despite the franchise’s patently absurd premise, they created distance and dampened emotional engagement. Terrifier 2 creates a perfect, troubling synergy between Dead Alive’s gross-out comedy and Saw’s depraved evil. We laugh at the Troll-2­-esque absurdity of certain scenes, but when it gets down to the violence, we are bowled over by its cruelty and inhumanity.

Related: Terrifier: Top 10 Moments From the Gory Horror Franchise

It could be said that Art The Clown is an “aspirational slasher,” someone offering a different M.O. and more ingenuity than those who preceded him. Jason Voorhees was driven by a deep-seated need for vengeance, but Art seems like he’s just in it to have a good time. Michael Myers was once content to kill each of his victims in a single stroke, whereas Art The Clown makes papier-mâché projects out of his targets, ushering them through as many stages of pain and dismemberment as possible. In his own extremely messed-up way, Art The Clown is encouraging other slashers to “do better” and to “think outside the box.” And he’s also got a distinct personality, which is a huge plus.

Can a Slasher Be "Elevated Horror?"

Art the Clown in Terrifier 2
Bloody Disgusting

Now, it’s not that Leone is necessarily consciously trying to subvert expectations of the subgenre. He does seem to eschew ideas about who is supposed to get killed when, but it’s almost as if that is because he didn’t get the memo, or perhaps it got redirected to his spam. Dream sequences, additionally, are not uncommon for this kind of film, but Leone employs one that goes on for nearly ten minutes, far beyond the point of necessity.

Does this lack of storytelling economy suggest a self-indulgent streak in Leone? Does the film run long simply because it has an inflated sense of its own importance? Possibly, yes. But unlike some other contemporary indie horror (looking at you, A24!), it makes few other overtures toward being artistic. Nobody blinks an eye when Midsommar runs for two and a half hours, so why does Terrifier 2 get side-eye?

Related: Exclusive: Chris Jericho on Terrifier 2, Says The Painmaker Might be Able to Take Art the Clown

It all goes back to what Barbarian director Zach Cregger told film journalist Frankie Gilmore of Discussing Film about the idea of “elevated horror”:

[The term “elevated horror” is] for people who see horror as some inferior genre. Like, “I don’t like horror, but I like elevated horror. I like Hereditary and Get Out.” By the way, I worship Hereditary and Get Out. But I also worship Evil Dead II because it’s a fantastic movie. I don’t care where we land on the spectrum of horror versus “elevated horror” because I just think that term is useless.

Terrifier 2 is Best When it Isn't Trying to Be Good

Terrifier 2
Bloody Disgusting

True horror fans would argue that the genre is, and always has been, relevant. But if horror is indeed having any kind of public-relations renaissance right now, then the slasher movie – the original, non-franchised slasher movie especially – has yet to be taken as seriously. The big question is whether Terrifier 2 is the film to wake people up to this idea. And the answer to this question is a loud, resounding “no.”

Terrifier 2 has no interest in winning over its detractors. It is busy, noisy, inconsistent, gratuitously violent, and quite sexist. The film's at its least interesting when it is actively trying to make a statement or be subversive. It feels most transgressive when it casts its audience’s feelings into the fire. Per its vanity and excess, it is one of the truest, ugliest exploitation films of recent years, made even more perverse by the ersatz Disney fairy tale at its center.

It’s possible that Terrifier 2 isn’t even “good,” at least in the ways that we traditionally define the word. But at the very least, it feels original and unique, especially for a slasher movie – and that’s enough to recommend it.