Terrifier 2 Director Responds To Film Runtime Criticisms (And Stands By His Edit) [Exclusive]
As Roger Ebert's old adage goes, no good film is too long, and no bad film is short enough. When it comes to a film's running time, the better movies will expertly pace out their scenes and present their story in exactly the way they need to be presented, whether that takes 60 minutes or 600 (incidentally, Lav Diaz's 2004 film "Evolution of a Filipino Family" runs 624 minutes). There's no universal bellwether connecting running time to quality. A film can drag through a very brief running time, or be riveting for several straight hours.
It's only when certain genres traditionally associated with brief running times suddenly see the release of a two-hour-plus entry that discussions of film length are revived in earnest. Action pictures are typically 90 to 100 minutes. When a superhero film comes along that's 180 minutes (as was "The Batman"), questions arise pertaining to the necessity of that length. The same might be said of Damian Leone's 2022 sleeper hit "Terrifier 2," a gore-soaked slasher film that runs a whopping 138 minutes. Slasher films are traditionally swift affairs that have audiences back outdoors in the sunlight after about an hour and a half. Two hours and 18 minutes seems like a long time to watch Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) slice people into ribbons.
Leone, however, recently spoke with /Film's own Jacob Hall, and wanted to expressly defend his choice to make "Terrifier 2" as long as it is. While he doesn't quite Ebert, he pragmatically explained that a movie is not about adhering to a certain length but mastering the function of a scene and the overall pacing. In this regard, Leone seems to feel that "Terrifier 2" isn't any longer or shorter than it needed to be.
Unsupervised
Leone rightfully points out, at least in a passing way, that film running times are dictated less by convention and traditional storytelling traditions as they are by studio heads that are conscious of how well certain runtimes are marketed and presented in a busy filmgoing marketplace. "Terrifier 2" was a passion project with a small crew that cost a mere $250,000 to make. With so little at stake, Leone had no oversight, leaving him free to film and cut his flick however he wanted. In his own words:
"I never thought about the length. [...] I just shot the organic story that I wrote, basically. I didn't have anybody over my shoulder saying, 'This is too long. What are you doing? This can't possibly be.' But I knew that we had to just keep the audience's attention throughout the entire movie, so it was very important not to go too long without bringing Art the Clown into the mix back again, or have something exciting happen."
This approach seemingly allowed Leone to have a good mix of story-based character moments, punctuated with just the right amount of bloody mayhem. Art, a supernatural entity driven to kill and maim people by an unnamed demonic impulse, has plenty of screen time, but so, too, do the human characters. Leone continued:
"[I]t was very important that every scene with Sienna [Laura LaVera] or Jonathan [Elliott Fullam], I had to keep raising the intensity or raising the stakes, or every scene you had to learn something new about them, or questions had to arise just to keep the audience invested and interested as you go. So those were the two factors in being able to maintain that length.
What longer running times mean
Many critics and filmmakers, of course, equate a long running time with a sense of self-importance on a filmmaker's part. A 90-minute film isn't as "big" as a 150-minute film. No matter the content, one can rest assured that critics will refer to any 180-minute film as "epic," even if it isn't ("The Batman" is not epic; it's merely long). Leone, however, does recognize that spending a long time with a movie can inform how an audience feels about it, and how deeply it will mark them. He sees "Terrifier 2," wielding its 138 minutes, as a comment on how well it transcends the traditions of slasher movies.
Notably, Leone feels that "Terrifier 2" is more interesting when viewed as a character piece:
"[F]or some people [the length] did not work. That is a large criticism that we get all the time is, 'It's too long. What are you thinking? You can't possibly have a slasher film that's that long.' I disagree. I think to me, this is bigger than a slasher film. I don't make these movies anymore just to make a slasher film. To me, that's possibly the least interesting aspect of the movie. [...] I'm really more invested in Sienna at this point as a character, and her arc, and Art as well. I mean, he's going through this wonderful metamorphosis right now, as is she."
To make a movie with a lot of horror mayhem, but also a good amount of actual character development, it seems that time is needed. Leone had the leeway to have it both ways. He liked that his film has strong character work, but, he added, "Let's not forget that everybody's here to see Art the Clown kill people."