Writer-director Damien Leone’s gory sequel to his 2016 killer clown cult hit, ‘Terrifier 2’ is having a dream run at the box office. It has turned out to be an unexpected domestic box-office hit, raking in an estimated $1.9 M last week, as per Box Office Mojo report. It grossed $0.4 M in the first week, $1.04 M in the second week – that is +157.8% up, and $1.9 M in its third week – that’s +84%.
It shocked the industry over the weekend when it grossed just over $1 million at the domestic box office. Although the box office number may not catch your eye, given the latest film in the DC Extended Universe, Black Adam, starring Dwayne Johnson, stormed at the Box Office collecting $67 M but don’t forget that “Terrifier 2” is a micro-budget film produced on a shoe-string budget of $250,000 with zero mainstream marketing.
Overall, the two-hour, eighteen minutes slasher has made $5.2 M at the domestic box office as it approaches its third week in theaters.
“Indie horror is alive and well,” the film’s writer-director, Damien Leone, wrote on Twitter last Saturday amid news of the film’s continued box office performance.
Why is “Terrifier 2” such a big hit at Box Office?
A film lacking in its content and storytelling would not sustain such hype, and that’s the primary rule. “While the first Terrifier was, in fact, a gore-fest of bloody murders that required no particular storyline, Terrifier 2 adds more meat (pardon the pun) to the brutality. The fans needed to get what they came to watch; grisly gore porn. And the extended run time does absolute justice to the slasher with a plot that doesn’t steal attention or time away from the bloodiness,” writes Lopamudra Majumdar in her review of Terrifier 2.
Even Stephen King voiced his opinion in his recent tweet. His brief reaction to the film “TERRIFIER 2: Grossin’ you out old-school.” His mention of the film’s “old-school” style gives the nod to the practical effects and classic over-the-top slasher style employed in the movie. The film currently holds an 89% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 35 reviews and a 66% rating on Metacritic based on five reviews.
But the excellent rating, good storytelling, and praise from Stephen King are just some of the reasons for such a wild run at the box office. One of the most important driving factors is all the reports claiming the horror movie has caused various moviegoers to walk out, faint, or vomit in the middle of the film. Photos of viewers in wheelchairs getting medical attention outside of a “Terrifier 2” screening have gone viral on social media, turning the bloody sequel into something of an endurance test for horror movie fans.
“The guy behind me passed out cold n crashed into my chair; another guy left because he didn’t feel good, I overheard him say, and walking out the theatre door, I heard a guy puking hard & loud in the bathroom,” one Twitter user wrote of the film on Oct. 7, calling it “an amazing gory mess.”
“Listen, I would have loved to have a couple of walk-outs, I think that’s sort of a badge of honor because it is an intense movie,” Leone recently told Entertainment Weekly about the film’s reaction. “I don’t want people fainting, getting hurt during the movie. But it’s surreal.”
The movie follows Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) as he “returns to the timid town of Miles County where he targets a teenage girl and her younger brother on Halloween night,” after “being resurrected by a sinister entity,” according to a synopsis on IMDb.
