Terrifier 2 & 3 Length Defended by Director: There’s More Filler in 80-Minute Slashers

Both Terrifier 2 and Terrifier 3 are surprisingly long movies for the slasher genre, with both projects clocking in at over two hours long. However, series creator and director Damien Leone isn’t too concerned with anything but telling the right story.

What did Leone say about the length of Terrifier 2 and 3?

Speaking to ComingSoon, Leone said that he’s not too concerned with making a movie a specific length. While he would like to stay under the two-and-a-half-hour mark, he’s still happy with how Terrifier 2 came out.

“I’m happy with what Terrifier 2 is,” said Leone. “I’m happy with the length of it, but what wasn’t working for a lot of people was the length. It was too much for just a mass audience. Especially now we’re living in TikTok era. 2 hours, 18 minutes, which is the runtime of Terrifier 2, is a lot to ask of the audience. So I don’t think it was a mistake, so to speak. That was just genuinely the movie, the story I wanted to tell. But I don’t wanna double down on that now and say, “Well, you didn’t like 2 hours, 18 minutes. Here’s 2 hours, 40 minutes. Deal with it.” That’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to make this as accessible for people while not losing what’s important to the franchise. So, that’s the reason why it came in at now 2 hours. I think it’s 2 hours and 5 minutes.”

On the topic of shortening the movies, Leone said he sometimes hears that “filler” could be cut but argues that people don’t understand the excitement of the Terrifier movies are in the bigger set pieces featuring Art the Clown.

“I think that they’re underestimating or they’re not realizing what’s padding these runtimes isn’t the stuff in between that you think is dragging,” Leon said. “It’s the big Art the Clown set pieces that make these movies unorthodox, and that adds to the longer runtime. Everything else, if you took it out, it would be just as long as the “filler,” so to speak, that’s in your typical slasher movie.

“Your typical slasher movie is an hour and 20 minutes, an hour and 30 minutes, and your killer’s only in the movie for five minutes, like seven minutes. The kill scenes add up to about three minutes of the entire movie. You know what I mean? So you probably have more filler and more drama in your typical 80-minute slasher than you do in Terrifier 2. It’s just there are so many big scenes with Art the Clown where he’s toying with his victims for four minutes, where he’s killing somebody for four minutes. You don’t want just one kill. You want a bunch of kills. That’s what this franchise has become known for. So again, it’s a very unorthodox slasher film, and I think it gets unjustly criticized for its runtime.”

Terrifier 3 is now playing in theaters.