Terrifier 2

 At the end of Terrifier, Art the clown (spoilers!) comes back to life after shooting himself and goes after the mortician examining him. It's a surprising scene, as the movie had up to that point resolutely avoided any supernatural trappings (unless you count Art's tendency to pop up out of nowhere like Droopy Dog.)

 Terrifier 2 picks up from there, literally and figuratively. We get a continuation of that scene where our favorite clown goes to town on the poor mortician's face with a tiny medical hammer - teeth and blood flying everywhere. It's an impressive and disgusting bit of practical effects that easily tops anything from the first movie, and maybe unconsciously carries on the theme of undersized tools causing outsized damage (remember that time when Art cut a girl in half using a one-handed hacksaw?)

 In any case, the sequel rolls with that resurrection, turning Art into more of an otherworldly threat complete with a ghostly sidekick and his own clown-themed pseudo dimension over the course of the story. If the first movie was (in part by necessity) a grungy video-nasty-style slasher flick, Terrifier 2 is a bona fide horror extravaganza that doubles down on the nastiness from the first movie but adds likeable characters with an actual arc, fantasy elements, and some very funny pitch-black humor. It's a welcome return to All Hallow's Eve more eclectic horror offerings, and makes it (for me) a markedly more fun movie than its predecessor, even as it ramps up the gore and suffering.

 The bigger budget is very noticeable - not just in the effects, as the movie expands to more locations, manages much more dynamic shots and a wrangles a much larger cast to accommodate the more ambitious script.

 After a (very funny) bit of business where Art, who is still every bit the hateful asshole, goes to a laundromat to wash his blood-stained clown duds after a messy resurrection, the retrowave-drenched credits roll and we're introduced to our new protagonist.

 A full year has past since the Miles County Massacre. Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) is a young girl who's putting the finishing touches on a warrior angel costume which, we'll later learn, is based on a character her late father created for her. She lives with her mom (Sarah Voigt) and little brother (Elliott Fullam) and is preparing the costume for a Halloween party she plans to attend with her friends. 

 There's some real sweetness to their relationships, which immediately makes the stakes feel that much higher than with the thinly sketched bunch from the first movie. That night, as Sienna goes to sleep, Art appears in her dreams in what's easily the weakest element in the movie, a purposefully stilted dream sequence that is unimaginatively portrayed as some sort of kid's show. Oh well, at least it has some impressively chunky squibs going off once Art inevitably turns murderous...
 The flames from her dream spread to her real-life bedroom when she wakes, establishing that we're playing by Nightmare on Elm Street rules here, and that there's some sort of connection between Art and Sienna. Oops!

 Comparing notes, Sienna and her brother notice that her father had known about Art the clown even before he went on his rampage. There are some shards of a mythology strewn throughout the movie, enough to allow you to draw some conclusions, but it's all left incomplete and mysterious; I can get behind that. There's room for sequels to explain things to death, but I like this more indirect approach.

 The body count starts mounting on the following day. Sienna and her brother have run-ins with Art in town, who's having a busy day of butchering random people while he's not harassing the Shaw family: This includes one of Sienna's friends (Casey Hartnett) in a scene that's almost as sexualized, and way more disturbing that the scene that had everyone in a tizzy from the first Terrifier. There's a terrific joke in there that got a huge laugh out of me, and immediately made me feel a bit guilty about it. Top marks! And if the misogyny worries you, don't worry. The movie's response to being charged with sexualized violence is to basically double down on it, and then add a scene with a dude (Charlie McElveen) getting his own sexualized and very nasty dose of ultraviolence.

 Events escalate, as they are wont to do, and it all builds up to a satisfying (and satisfyingly over-the-top) climax at an abandoned carnival. There's also a hilariously bizarre mid-credits setup for the now-inevitable sequel.

  So... yeah, if you couldn't tell by now, I liked this one a lot. It's a batshit insane movie in all the best ways, showing commendable ambition and craftmanship, and reclaiming extreme gore from the more dour horror movies that have been the norm since the early 00's.

 The only thing keeping me from loving it, besides the dream sequence, is that it's a bit too self-indulgent, there's a bit too much flab. Not as much as on recent too-long movies, but by the end I was getting a tiny bit impatient.

 Still, I'm very happy it's been so successful; Here's hoping we get to cheerfully discuss in a decade whether the Terrifier series jumped the shark at Seed of Terrifier or on Terri Firmer.