Good luck making an attempt each side-ism with a franchise well-known for slicing girls in half.
Since bursting onto the style scene, Damien Leone’s “Terrifier” sequence has change into essentially the most controversial success story in modern horror. To some, it’s a revolutionary triumph of low-budget filmmaking that boomed on the field workplace. To others, it’s an ultraviolent slasher a couple of killer clown with a keenness for sexual brutality and, in “Terrifier 3,” useless kids.
To these paying consideration, it’s each.
Now, an ongoing PR catastrophe for the filmmaker is dividing American audiences even additional. On Monday, Leone posted on social media proclaiming that anybody “no matter their political affiliations” was welcome within the “Terrifier” group as long as they’re “an honest human being.”
By most accounts, the director’s remarks have been a thinly veiled response to the progressive on-line presence of his star evil clown, David Howard Thornton, and ultimate lady Sienna Shaw, actress Lauren LaVera. Neither wished to speak to IndieWire in regards to the quickly rising controversy (Leone didn’t reply to our request both), however their progressive views have been readily seen on-line for months.
Following the election, LaVera acquired loss of life threats on X after encouraging girls to arm themselves in opposition to potential violence. She later left the platform, owned by Trump appointee Elon Musk, describing its content material as “plenty of unclocked bigotry.”
Leone was not compelled to talk out in regards to the state of politics and “Terrifier” then, however his current remarks — resembling an overdue apologia made largely for Republicans — ignited vital backlash.
Leone has nodded respectfully to some progressive positions, together with LGBTQ rights, and critically didn’t come out with any particular political stance. Whether or not you’ll be able to take pleasure in motion pictures made by folks you disagree with is a matter of non-public ethics and style, however the director poked a hornet’s nest by inviting the web to argue whether or not the style itself is inherently political.
He wrote, “‘Terrifier’ is NOT in any manner, form, or kind a political franchise. I didn’t get into filmmaking to change into a politician or promote any political agendas or ideologies, particularly via a killer clown film.”
The ridiculousness of the scenario is evident, nevertheless it doesn’t absolve Leone of his duty as a serious pressure in movie. The severity of the violence he’s embraced as a director with the “Terrifier” motion pictures has drawn much more scrutiny to the horror style at a time when issues about censorship are already excessive. Who these excessive movies are being made for (nudity and all) is now a matter of public curiosity.
Viewers information from PostTrack, as reported by Deadline, says that “Terrifier 3” ticket-holders leaned 61 % male — with 18- to 24-year-old males making up the most important demo, at 37 %. Youthful males have been a key pressure within the extremely gendered politics of the final U.S. Presidential Election, and on-line abuse in opposition to girls, like what LaVera skilled, surged when poll counting was accomplished.
Throw in remarks made by Cineverse CEO Chris McGurk to IndieWire’s Brian Welk final fall and additional parallels between “Terrifier” advertising and the Trump marketing campaign emerge.
“I’m studying these items in regards to the election, and no matter what you consider what labored or what didn’t work, they’re saying that the Kamala marketing campaign was extremely inefficient as a result of she spent all of her time on nationwide media whereas Trump and firm went to the podcast world that she prevented,” mentioned McGurk. “In a manner that’s kind of a macro model of what we simply did proper right here.” (Cineverse and Iconic Occasions declined to remark.)
Leone has confronted accusations of misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and “complicity via silence” for a number of days on-line. He’s lengthy weathered such criticism from non-horror people, however now many ex-“Terrifier” followers are saying they won’t return to theaters for “Terrifier 4” exactly as a result of they see Leone as a de facto Trump supporter.
And the drumbeat grows. “Horror has by no means been impartial. Horror has all the time belonged to the outcasts, to the rebels, to the individuals who refuse to be erased,” wrote queer immigrant filmmaker Dima Barch for Dread Central, criticizing Leone’s assertion. “I refuse to be erased.”
If the “Terrifier” director’s newest PR transfer was meant to guard his franchise from fracturing, then it badly backfired. The sense that Trump voters are not welcome in some circles has by no means been stronger, however Leone’s makes an attempt at centrism make it tough for a lot of minority style lovers to remain on board together with his work.
“I worry ‘Terrifer 3’ wasn’t the feminist textual content I believed it was,” I messaged frequent IndieWire contributor Katie Rife the day after the election.
“They are going to be seemed again on because the defining horror movies of the Trump period,” she mentioned, proper as all the time.
As a movie critic, sure motion pictures grasp in your orbit effectively after their preliminary launch and change into the tasks you “champion” long run. That was the case for me and “Terrifier 3.”
After giving the Christmas-themed sequel a optimistic evaluation out of Unbelievable Fest 2024, I appeared on a number of platforms explaining why I noticed the film as a serious success for low-budget filmmaking — and even a “feminist” triumph based mostly on its Valkyrie-like hero.
I stand by my evaluation of Leone’s work as a particular results wizard (he’s a genius in that regard), and I wouldn’t change a factor about my compliments for Thornton and LaVera’s fierce performing performances. However after reckoning with my very own modified perspective on the movies, I’d argue you don’t have to see Leone’s social media or voting document to acknowledge the innate Trump-iness baked into the “Terrifier” franchise.
How a distributor reaches an viewers could be simply as vital as what they attain them with, and the so-called “Joe Rogan’s Military” of male podcast listeners has change into an omnipresent pressure for sexism throughout popular culture. It’s price noting the enchantment of bodily violence to the far-right within the period of “cage-match politics” too. Trump has a blossoming relationship with the UFC, and performative violence geared toward girls in addition to males abounds within the “Terrifier” movies. Artwork the Clown can also be a frequent supply of right-wing meme-ification in a few of the darkest corners of the web.
Whether or not Leone chooses to ever overtly embrace or counter the politics surrounding his work — one thing numerous followers are arguing he’s already accomplished together with his current assertion — “Terrifier” appears to learn from the identical media pipeline and tradition utilized by Trump to achieve voters.
“Folks assume solely vile, repulsive folks watch these [movies], and it’s not true in any respect,” Leone mentioned to me throughout an interview final October. “It’s people who find themselves usually very passive, they usually’re looking for methods to take care of the horrors of actuality. That’s why the horror film is a multi-billion-dollar trade.”
It’s humorous Leone pointed to the underside line of the horror enterprise. Greater than defending their morals or doing what’s proper, many Trump supporters have recognized the economic system as a serious motivating think about who they selected for president. In 2025, the battle for some People to afford fundamental requirements has collided with the wants of different marginalized teams and left either side of the aisle laying declare to the title of “underdog.”
An analogous tug of struggle is taking part in out for “Terrifier” now — not simply between Leone and Thornton or LaVera behind the scenes, but in addition between Leone and far of his liberal viewers.
None of this proves the “Terrifier” motion pictures are actively advocating for Trump, however within the spirit of casting the widest web for his film’s success, Leone has been perceived as behaving much less like an artist and extra like a politician, irrespective of his precise intent. This, coming from a filmmaker whose runaway horror hit defied expectations by going into theaters unrated and successful massive on the field workplace, has left lots of his extra punk rock followers feeling manipulated — and rightly so. (As a number of customers on Reddit and X identified, it’s additionally a beautiful instance of the Streisand impact that makes you ponder whether “Terrifier” viewers would have cared about Leone or Thornton’s politics in any respect if not for the assertion on Monday.)
After I requested Leone particularly in regards to the allegations that his movies have been sexist in our interview, he pushed again. “I might attempt my greatest to persuade folks, but when individuals are going to label me then I don’t assume I’m going to vary their opinion,” the director mentioned then. “I simply need to be pleased with the reality. And I believe that when all this smoke clears, Sienna might be standing as this very robust character no matter gender. Folks ought to decide my misogyny on that character.”
As the burden of the Trump administration sinks in, the violent subjection of ladies (a cornerstone of Leone’s catalogue, for good or unhealthy) is decidedly political. The director’s makes an attempt to straddle the red-blue divide like a grindhouse buzzsaw are problematic at greatest, and whereas he would possibly be capable to repair the debacle with a transparent, concise assertion, the authenticity of his voice as a zero-fucks-given filmmaker has been introduced below extreme and deserved scrutiny.
It’s price noting that horror and ladies’s our bodies might be entrance of thoughts on the 2025 Oscars, the place Coralie Fargeat stands to interrupt the style’s best awards ceiling with the decidedly feminist “The Substance” competing for each Finest Image and Finest Director.
Whereas Leone desires viewers to measure the gender politics of “Terrifier” on its ultimate lady alone, I’ll be evaluating his future movies by how pro-woman they really are — and what the director will (and gained’t) do for his actual followers getting tortured by totally different sorts of clowns.