Editorials
‘Terrifier 2’ – 11 Things We Learned from the Blu-ray Commentary Track
While the first Terrifier quickly gained a cult following, the chief criticism lobbed at it was the perceived lack of plot. Terrifier writer-director Damien Leone seems to have taken that to heart, as Terrifier 2 packs a lot of story – including several intentionally ambiguous plotlines to be resolved in a future installment – into a whopping 138 minutes.
Despite playing it coy in interviews, those too impatient to wait for the eventual Terrifier 3 will be pleased to know that Leone answers many of fans’ most burning questions in the audio commentary (recorded the day before the film’s US premiere) that accompanies Terrifier 2 on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD – the release is NOW AVAILABLE.
This article contains spoilers for the film, but you also may want to avoid it if you want to go into Terrifier 3 completely blind, as Leone reveals several hints at where the story is going.
Without further ado, here are 11 things I learned from the Terrifier 2 commentary.
1. Lauren LaVera was the first and only choice for Sienna
Terrifier 2 final girl Sienna Shaw is Leone’s “favorite character that I ever wrote,” based in part by his two older sisters. Since the character’s father is an artist, her name came from Bob Ross’ frequent use of the color burnt sienna.
Lauren LaVera was the first and only choice for the role, as there was never a runner up. Leone notes, “I’ve never had somebody care more for a character that I wrote than Lauren did for Sienna. She was just absolutely in love with this character – we both were – and we worked so hard in fleshing her out and making her a very relatable, interesting hero.”
2. Art’s death is foreshadowed early in the movie
When Sienna confronts her mother about her brother’s fascination with Art the Clown, her mother reminds Sienna that her father caught her cutting the heads off of minnows on a fishing trip when she was younger. “That goes to show that there is a dark side within Sienna,” discloses Leone. “And that’s going to come back when she decapitates Art at the end.”
3. The Clown Safe scene is pivotal to Sienna’s journey
Between Sienna seeing Art for the first time, Indiegogo backers as extras, gratuitous tommy gun blasts, and fire stunts, The Clown Cafe scene is one of the movie’s biggest – and one Leone’s favorite – set pieces. More than a mere dream sequence that some people have dismissed it as, it’s pivotal to Sienna’s journey.
Leone describes it as “a divine test that manifests itself within Sienna’s subconscious” conducted by the forces of good that want to anoint Sienna to combat Art. “If she’s not courageous at the end and doesn’t decide to fight back against Art, then she will not be the one.” Sienna’s decision to stick her hand into the ominous cereal box to fend off Art solidifies her as the chosen one.
Leone also points out the subtext of showing people in line with luggage accompanied by a pilot and a stewardess. “That’s all a reflection of Sienna’s wings and her going on a metaphysical journey; some transcendence.”
4. Art the Clown Provides the Art Crispies voice-over
Art the Clown may be silent, but the man behind the face paint, David Howard Thornton, is also a voice actor and impressionist. He provides the voice-over for the Art Crispies cereal commercial during the Clown Cafe sequence.
“Since I always take his voice away, I said, ‘Hey, you want to do this little voiceover for the cereal?'” Leone recalls. Thornton previously made a similar vocal cameo in a radio broadcast in the first Terrifier.
5. Sienna’s sword isn’t supernatural until she uses it to fight back
The Clown Cafe scene culminates with Sienna reaching into a cereal box and pulling out the sword her father gifted to her, which she proceeds to use to fight back against Art and his makeshift flamethrower.
Much has been speculated about the sword, and Damien clarifies that it isn’t supernatural in and of itself; it only gains its power when Sienna uses it to defend herself. “When she decides to fight and the fire hits the sword, that is the moment where the sword officially becomes baptized. It breaks into reality, and the sword is literally on fire.”
The scolding that ensues from Sienna’s mother is inspired by an actual argument between Leone and his own mother. When he was younger, the budding filmmaker inadvertently awakened his mother by melting sulfur-based clay on the stove for a special effect, filling the house with foul smoke.
6. The Little Pale Girl’s look was inspired by Art the Clown cosplayers
The Little Pale Girl – who Leone refers to as “the embodiment of evil that has resurrected Art the Clown” – was initially envisioned as a “little girl from the ’60s in a yellow sundress with flowers on it and maybe a flower behind her ear.” That changed on Halloween 2017 – the year before filming started – when Leone was tagged by various fans in homemade Art costumes on Instagram.
Noting how many females dressed as Art, he was inspired to radically change the design of the Little Pale Girl. Not wanting her to wear the exact same outfit as Art, he created a mirror image (“where he’s black, she’s white”). Leone also points out that the character’s teeth are switched – the upper teeth are on the bottom and vice versa – to add to the unease.
7. Sienna’s father was a vessel for both good and evil
There has been some debate among fans as to whether Art the Clown is Sienna’s father. While he maintains a bit of mystique regarding the character, Leone seems to confirm that he is not Art. The filmmaker offers additional insight into the father:
“The father was sort of a vessel for that supernatural good that needs to get to Sienna, and he was the one who started getting the visions; not understanding why necessarily or what’s happening, but he knew he had to get the sword for Sienna. He knew that she was meant for something important. And because of that, he was also channeling the bad force that was coming in; the evil entity that was gonna be the counterpart to that good.”
He continues, “It was all starting to come through, and that’s why he was becoming abusive. And all of this going on inside of him manifested itself into a physical tumor that eventually made him go crazy and kill himself. He was the vessel. It was channeling through him, and he was supplying Sienna with what she needed to go forward on her journey. It was an essential sacrifice on his part, which is another classic, Biblical, mythic theme.”
8. The costume shop scene is Leone’s homage to his favorite scene in Terrifier
Filmed on location at Abracadabra in New York City, the costume shop scene was immediately embraced by fans after a brief clip of Art wearing gaudy sunglasses was featured in the trailer. Leone looks at the scene as the sequel’s version of Terrifier‘s pizza shop sequence, which is his favorite scene in the first film.
“I love when Art is able to interact with people in public. That’s one of the cool things about Art that separates him from the other slashers, is that he’s not immediately threatening,” he explains. “I love to get as much tension and suspense out of that situation as possible.”
9. The club scene features a call-back to Leone’s first short film
During the club scene, two background actors are dressed as cloaked demons from The 9th Circle, Leone’s first short film from 2008. This was an unplanned call-back, as a pair of Indiegogo backers showed up in the costumes as a surprise to the director.
For those unfamiliar, The 9th Circle marked the first appearance of Art the Clown (then played by Mike Giannelli). It was later reworked to be incorporated into Leone’s 2013 horror anthology, All Hallows’ Eve.
10. Leone hid references to his favorite films throughout the movie
Leone peppered the film with loving homages and references to several of his favorite films, some more overt than others. They include…
- The Exorcist (the Little Pale Girl secretes goo on the floor similar to Regan urinating on the rug)
- Halloween (Jeff first approaches Brooke disguised under a ghost sheet with glasses)
- Maniac (Art blasting Barbara’s head off with a shotgun is a tribute to Tom Savini’s mind-blowing special effects)
- Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (Art messing around with the sunglasses is based on Pee-Wee in the coffee shop)
- Class of 1984 (Art smashes Sienna’s face into the bathroom mirror)
- The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Art mocks his victims similar to the Hitchhiker)
- Salem’s Lot (the Little Pale Girl’s eyes glow yellow at the end)
11. Malignant forced the mid-credit sequence to be reshot
Victoria’s portion of the mid-credit sequence had to be reshot due to its unforeseen similarities to James Wan’s Malignant. In the original version, “Victoria’s not pregnant. She’s in the room, singing the song, and scratching the back of her head and she notices there’s blood all over her fingers.” The nurses hear her screaming and run to the room to find her writhing on the floor holding her head.
“Leah [Voysey] inspects her head and all of a sudden her fingers get bit off. You don’t know what the hell’s going on, and there’s mayhem, and Chris Jericho tackles her. Victoria reaches up, grabs the back of her scalp, rips her scalp open, and it’s Art the Clown growing on the back of her head like a tumor.”
You can probably see where this is going. “Of course, a couple of months after we shot it, Malignant came out, and we said, ‘Oh, my god. We both did the exact same thing, and we can’t possibly do that.’ So we had to go and reconfigure this.” Production designer Olga Turka suggested Victoria give birth to Art instead, and Leone ran with the idea.
Of the three films that make up the Diabolical Trinity of classic religious horror films—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and The Omen (1976)—The Omen is the most purely entertaining.
While Rosemary’s Baby digs into the societal shifts of the 60s and The Exorcist explores spiritual tensions between faith and doubt in an ever-shifting world, The Omen seems most interested in just telling a thrilling story. It achieves this by blending two major trends of the 1970s, the devil movie and the paranoid thriller, into one crackling adventure yarn. In the process, The Omen has sparked fear and curiosity about what could happen in the “end times” if such events are to occur.
After seeing The Exorcist, producer Harvey Bernhard contacted writer David Seltzer and said something along the lines of, “Hey, write me one of those.” Seltzer, having never read the Bible, thought it would be an interesting challenge, so, according to various interviews, he read the Bible and several commentaries in search of a story. Then he stumbled upon a passage in the book of Revelation, the image of a great Beast rising out of the sea, that sparked his imagination. In the commentaries, he found that the sea represented politics in some interpretations of the text, and he began building his story on that foundation.
Seltzer has told this story often, and I am inclined to believe him. However, from there, much of the theological-sounding lore of The Omen was created purely by Seltzer. Many of the ideas surrounding The Antichrist in the film appear to be drawn much more from the pop-eschatology sensation of the 1970s, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay, than any Biblical source.
Lindsay’s book was the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s and re-popularized views of the “last days” that had been dying along with fundamentalism for decades, namely Dispensationalism, Millennialism, and the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. In dispensationalism, history is broken into several epochs of time (or dispensations) that culminate in the return of Christ and his thousand-year (millennial) reign.
Before this return, a seven-year Tribulation will occur in which the Antichrist comes to power and persecutes all who oppose him, culminating in a battle between the forces of good and evil at the valley of Megiddo, usually called Armageddon. Of course, in this worldview, the true believers in Jesus will be lifted out, or raptured, before all this takes place. Since the publication and popularity of The Late Great Planet Earth, this has been the prominent belief in Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christian circles, though Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestant denominations largely reject it.
Lindsay also did something unique that had not been the case even in dispensationalist circles before him—he posited that the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 started the countdown to Armageddon. Fans of the film will immediately realize where Seltzer ran with this idea in the first line of the poem created for the movie: “When the Jews return to Zion…”
Damien Thorn and the Creation of Horror’s “Innocent Villain”
Seltzer’s next inspiration focused on the idea of the Antichrist as a child, what he would call the film’s “innocent villain.” In watching The Omen, it is readily apparent that Damien Thorn (Harvey Stephens) does not really do anything evil beyond a bit of normal kid mischief. Even the moment in which Damien knocks Kathy Thorn (Lee Remick) over a second-floor railing can be read as an accident orchestrated by Damien’s diabolically connected nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw). The film takes this idea of the innocent villain a step further by casting Gregory Peck, best known for playing arguably the greatest father in film history, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as Damien’s earthly father, an element that greatly satisfied Seltzer.
The New Testament itself says very little about the Antichrist and certainly nothing about his childhood. In fact, the word antichrist is used twice (1 John 2:18 and 2 John 7 for the curious) and refers to groups of people, not a particular person. There is also a passage in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 in which the writer (usually attributed to Paul) discusses “The Man of Lawlessness” who will “exalt himself over everything that is called God” and “proclaim himself to be God.”
Then there is the Beast of Revelation chapter 13 with “seven heads and ten horns” that Seltzer latched onto, which has been interpreted in a multitude of ways over the centuries. Powerful people throughout history, from Charlemagne, various Popes during the Protestant Reformation era, Napoleon and Hitler, to modern politicians, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, have all had the label placed on them by various circles. Even religious leaders like Billy Graham have not escaped being called the Antichrist.
Lindsay and modern dispensationalists are certain the Antichrist will be a 21st-century individual as they are equally certain that the Rapture, Tribulation, and return of Christ are imminent, likely within their lifetime. Many scholars and theologians, however, interpret these passages as symbolic representations of the Roman Empire and the first-century Caesars who persecuted, tortured, and murdered Christians and Jews who refused to submit to Imperial rule and worship them as gods. For example, that the Beast from the sea in Revelation has seven heads is symbolic of the famous seven mountains of Rome, with the 10 horns referring to rulers and magistrates of the Empire.
But this is all really of no matter to Seltzer and the story of The Omen. Instead of being concerned with any historical or theological accuracy, he instead built his own lore, which sends Robert Thorn and photographer Keith Jennings (David Warner) on a globetrotting investigation into the nature of the Antichrist and how to stop him. Some of this lore includes the child being born of a jackal, the reaction of animals, the protective cult that arises around Damien, the daggers of Megiddo, and maybe most interesting of all, the peculiar flaws in Jennings’s photographs that presage the ways certain individuals will die.
All these aspects are where the paranoid thrillers come in, as films like Blow Up (1966), Z (1969), The Conversation (1974), The Parallax View (1974), 3 Days of the Condor (1975), and All the President’s Men (1976) were all the rage at the time. Especially in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the idea of journalists (like Jennings) as ordinary heroes who could bring down the powerful, nefarious forces in the world was exactly what audiences craved. And what greater hidden evil force was there than the Devil? This is also why the device of the daggers of Megiddo is so important to a movie like this. If Damien is indeed the Antichrist, there must be a way to stop him, though in the Biblical text, the only power capable of destroying the Devil is God Himself.
The Mark of the Beast, 666, and the Film’s Most Famous Religious Symbolism
The piece of lore created for the movie with the most solid Biblical grounding is the Mark of the Beast. Revelation describes a mark on the forehead or hand of those who worship the Beast and his image. Again, this is symbolic language differentiating those who belong to the power of the Roman Empire and those who belong to Christ, who have the Mark of the Lamb. In Seltzer’s hands, the mark is very literal, a birthmark that is borne by not only the Antichrist but all his followers, meaning they are marked from before birth as belonging to Satan, and there is no escaping it. This is all rather distressing to the priest Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), who betrays his mark by warning Thorn about Damien and pays the price by memorably being impaled by a spire that falls from a church steeple after being struck by lightning.
Why is the mark three sixes? Again, this is drawn from a passage in Revelation that states that the Beast can be identified by calculating his number. In Biblical scholarship, this is believed to be the sum of the name of a man transferred into Hebrew numerology, a practice in which each Hebrew letter also represents a number. Using this method, the number of the name Caesar Nero, which many believe to be the most logical choice, is six hundred sixty-six. In the film and elsewhere, this number is changed to three individual sixes. According to the film, this represents the Diabolical Trinity (a designation also unique to the film) made up of Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet. That Damien carries this unique birthmark under his hair convinces Robert that the child is the Antichrist, and it’s up to him to destroy him.
Part of what makes The Omen great is its ambiguity. Damien could be the Antichrist, or he could be at the center of a series of coincidences. Director Richard Donner stated in interviews that he believed Robert Thorn had gone insane by the end of the film, which, to Donner, is the only explanation for why Thorn would attempt to kill an innocent child. However, that enigmatic smile in the final shot suggests that Damien does embody a spirit of great evil. The sequels, however, all but erase this ambiguity.
In audiences, The Omen sparked a renewed interest in the concept of the Antichrist and the dispensationalist interpretation of the end times that continues to echo throughout the last five decades. Around the time of the film’s release, even Elvis Presley was photographed brandishing a paperback copy of Seltzer’s novelization. Dispensationalist authors like Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, and John Hagee have made millions publishing books and giving lectures about the Antichrist and the end of the world.
The Legacy of The Omen, 50 Years Later
Though A Thief in the Night (1972) preceded The Omen in initial release, it gained quite a resurgence (along with the ability to create three sequels) in the wake of the popularity of The Omen and went on to scar the psyches of Evangelical children for decades. Hal Lindsay was also able to release a film version of The Late Great Planet Earth in 1978, complete with narration and a brief onscreen appearance from Orson Welles.
In the 1990s, the Left Behind series became a cultural phenomenon, spawning twelve books in the core series, a YA spinoff series, video games, and a movie series (2000-2005) starring Kirk Cameron. A bigger studio adaptation of the first book was released in 2014, starring Nicolas Cage. 20th Century Fox and The Omen got in on the renewed “end-of-the-world” vigor by releasing a remake of the original film on June 6, 2006. The franchise was revived once again in 2024 with The First Omen, which explores ideas of the Antichrist and the motivations of those in power in our current religious, social, and political context.
But despite all the sequels, spinoffs, rip-offs, remakes, and “end times” money grabs of the last 50 years, the original version of The Omen remains untouchable. Its greatest strength is that it seeks, first and foremost, to entertain. And it does so admirably.
After half a century, its influence can be felt in horror, the culture at large, and even in various faith circles. It is a testament to the power of story and film that, consciously or unconsciously, fans of The Omen and those who have never seen it alike are, to this very day, marked by the Beast.
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