It’s clear that Art the Clown is here to stay and his popularity among horror film enthusiasts is undeniable. But aside from the extreme violence of the films, there is another aspect of them that has been criticised, namely the running time.
The first Terrfier was just under 85 minutes long, which seemed pretty reasonable for a slasher film. But something happened with the second film, whose running time was allowed to grow seemingly uncontrollably to a whopping 138 minutes.
The third film, although a little shorter, is still 125 minutes long and in an interview with Coming Soon Damien Leone himself has answered why the films have become so long.
“I’m happy with what Terrifier 2 is. I’m happy with the length of it, but what wasn’t working for a lot of people was the length. It was too much for just a mass audience. Especially now we’re living in TikTok era. 2 hours, 18 minutes, which is the runtime of Terrifier 2, is a lot to ask of the audience. So I don’t think it was a mistake, so to speak. That was just genuinely the movie, the story I wanted to tell.
But I don’t wanna double down on that now and say, ‘Well, you didn’t like 2 hours, 18 minutes. Here’s 2 hours, 40 minutes. Deal with it.’ That’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to make this as accessible for people while not losing what’s important to the franchise. So, that’s the reason why (Terrifier 3) came in at now 2 hours.
I think it’s 2 hours and 5 minutes. So it’s like two hours, not including credits. But this could have been longer. Again, my original cut was like 2 hours and 20 minutes, and I had to just cut out like five or six scenes because I really didn’t want to deliver that 2 hour, 18-minute movie again because it’s a lot to ask.
Your typical slasher movie is an hour and 20 minutes, an hour and 30 minutes, and your killer’s only in the movie for five minutes, like seven minutes. The kill scenes add up to about three minutes of the entire movie. You know what I mean? So you probably have more filler and more drama in your typical 80-minute slasher than you do in Terrifier 2.
It’s just there are so many big scenes with Art the Clown where he’s toying with his victims for four minutes, where he’s killing somebody for four minutes. You don’t want just one kill. You want a bunch of kills. That’s what this franchise has become known for. So again, it’s a very unorthodox slasher film, and I think it gets unjustly criticized for its runtime.”
What do you think of Mr Leone’s argument, is the long length of the sequels justified?