Terrifier 2's Sienna Turned Out To Be Director Damien Leone's Favorite Part Of The Movie
Damien Leone's "Terrifier" has become infamous within horror circles for its extreme, no-holds-barred gore. Even by slasher movie standards, the kills are relentlessly brutal, the violence particularly cynical. "Terrifier 2" raises the bar even more, reportedly causing audiences to throw up and pass out in theaters as its main slasher villain Art the Clown chops, maims, and slaughters his way through the whopping 138-minute runtime. However, the sequel also introduces a new component to the story: a genuine protagonist that's supposed to stand tow-to-teeth with Art. Despite the gore fixation, it's this heroine, Sienna Shaw, who Leone was most excited about.
You see, the closest the first "Terrifier" had to a main character was the ordinary party-goer Tara Heyes, but Art killed her before the film's third act in a twist that echoes the death of Janet Leigh's Marion Crane in "Psycho." Even her surviving sister Vicky never truly gets her revenge, instead becoming horribly disfigured when Art decides to eat her face. The cruel fate of these characters makes it clear that "Terrifier" is all about Art and his sick, murderous habits. Not so with "Terrifier 2," which seeks to build an arch-nemesis for Art and a hero that the repulsed audience can root for.
An arch-nemesis for Art
In an interview with Awards Radar, Leone explained that developing the character of Sienna was the part of the writing process he was most excited about:
"My primary goal this time... was to really focus on a compelling protagonist... This was my crack at a heroine, a heroic character that's also very grounded in reality that I was really hoping that the audience could empathize with and get behind on her journey and really be scared for her and rooting for her during the film's climax. Thankfully, a lot of people have seemed to respond very favorably to her so that's awesome."
As dark and brutal as "Terrifier 2" gets (and, oh boy, it gets there), Sienna reveals Leone's desire to make something at least a little more optimistic. The director has been trying to create his own iconic slasher in Art the Clown ever since his short film "The 9th Circle" in 2008 and his anthology film "All Hallows' Eve" in 2013. Now that horror fans have accepted Art as a bona fide modern slasher villain, Leone has introduced the horror world to the inevitable archetype that makes watching these types of films more fun: the slasher hero.