When I saw that there was going to be a novelization of Terrifier 2, I was quite intrigued. After all, the main draw of these films seems to be watching their over-the-top kills play out with glorious practical FX, and unless it was going to be a flipbook novelization, they wouldn’t be visible on the page.
But as it turns out, Tim Waggoner (who also wrote the Halloween Kills and the recent X novel, so he’s got some experience with turning gory sequels into page-turners) fully understood the assignment. The author not only found a way to make those kills just as vivid and intense, but added some story points and inner thoughts for the characters in a way that makes the story feel tighter.
Full disclosure time: I am not exactly a die-hard fan of the Terrifier films. Not that I DISLIKE them; I appreciate the work behind the execution of their kill scenes, I find Art to be pretty amusing at times (excitedly giving the kids candy out of a bowl made from a severed head? LOVE IT).
As a slasher fan, I am, of course, stoked for their success, as it only helps the genre as a whole, but the excess cruelty in the kills doesn’t quite jive with Art’s goofiness in other scenes, so the tonal shifts make it harder for me to connect to them. Also, the pacing can be a bit sluggish at times; it’s legitimately weird that I was relieved to read that Terrifier 3 would “only” be two hours long after the 2:20ish second film. Shouldn’t these things be 95 minutes tops?
But that stuff wasn’t as big of an issue in the novel. For starters, Waggoner took it upon himself to add a few kills to the mix, breaking up those occasional long spurts between Art doing his thing with some additional carnage. If you ever watched the movie and wondered where he got a van, you’ll find out here along with a graphic depiction of Art murdering its owner (himself a killer, amusingly enough).
He also kills Jonathan’s two friends from school (the kids who find the dead possum) as they go out smearing cars with shaving cream on Halloween night, paying off Mrs. Shaw’s worries about hiding her own car from them. And while I found the dream scene in the film to be extraneous, those who loved it will be happy to know that here we get additional dreams with accompanying bloodshed, as both Jonathan and Mrs. Shaw have Art-mares of their own.
As for the kills we’ve already seen, Waggoner seems to have changed his tune since writing Halloween Kills a few years back. In that adaptation, while additions to characterizations and backstory were commonly seen throughout its pages, when it came to the violence he noticeably seemed to want to get it over with rather than dwell on the gory details. That’s not the case here; the opening death of the coroner alone lasts several pages. To make up for the lack of visuals, he often puts us inside the heads of the characters who are being sliced, burned, cut, etc.
The notorious halfway point killing of Sienna’s friend Allie (the one who is flayed and dismembered after denying him some Halloween candy) is just as hard to read as it was to watch, as Waggoner describes, “She was 1731436481 just a collection of skin, nerves, and organs–much of it damaged or missing–a broken and malfunctioning flesh machine that moved for a single reason: to try to escape the pain. But that was impossible because she WAS the pain now. There was nothing else left.” And it gets worse.
For fellow parents, we are also treated (?) to her mom’s devastating thoughts as she arrives home and sees the jumbled mess of blood and limbs that was once her daughter, reflecting on how she had one job in this world (protecting her) and completely failed at it. Some symbolic salt in the wound following the actual salt in the wound Art poured on the girl moments before.
The author also adds some beats to the kills here and there; Jeff being castrated in the movie wasn’t enough, apparently; here Art places it on his forehead to mimic being a unicorn, then squeezes it so hard that blood shoots out and sprays the dead man’s windshield, adding to Brooke’s terror before he sets his sights on her.
As for the actual plot, outside of those added kills/dreams mentioned earlier, Waggoner mostly sticks to the story as we know it, letting inner monologue and the occasional added bit of dismemberment make up the novel’s expanded elements. However, he implements two very interesting ideas that might be clues as to what we will see in the future, given the book’s “official” status and timely release before the third film.
One is fairly brief; it’s added material with Victoria (Tara’s now-faceless sister) and her parents, who are trying to be supportive of their daughter but are both unnerved by her appearance and also harboring some resentment that she failed to save her sister the year before, and how she too communicates with the little dead girl that’s dressed like Art. It’s not particularly enlightening, but it makes her appearance at the end of T2 itself seem less out of nowhere.
The other is more substantial and explains how Sienna managed to resurrect after being seemingly killed by Art inside the haunted house during the movie’s lengthy climax. Onscreen it appears as if the sword does it for her, but here, Waggoner suggests that she visits some sort of peaceful purgatory/afterlife inhabited by the women Art has killed so far: her mother, Dawn, Tara, Allie, Allie’s mom, and Brooke (sorry, Cat Lady, you can’t come).
They tell her she needs to return to help her brother, and then their souls swirl together and become a tendril kind of thing that enters the wound in her chest and gives her the strength she needs to not only come back to life, but kill Art for good.
Whether this was an idea Damien Leone had and couldn’t film for whatever reason or if it was purely Waggoner’s invention, I don’t know, but either way, it (relative to this series anyway) feels a lot less random than what we got in the actual film. And, given the accusations of misogyny in the franchise, it would have helped balance out some of that feeling with a nice moment that honors the strength in sisterhood.
Overall, I honestly think it’s simply a better version of the movie, though I am perhaps not the best judge since (again) I don’t particularly love the flick to begin with. There’s a lot to like of course, and I am excited for the new one, but the pacing and tonal issues make it something I rarely feel the desire to revisit the way I do my favorite slasher films (I just rewatched Halloween 4 for what was probably the 30th time).
However, most of those issues felt smoothed over here, and the added insight into the story’s more random moments makes them easier to buy. At 400 pages, it’s not exactly a quick read, but if you can’t get enough of Art and his adventures in Miles County, both casual and hardcore fans should be satisfied with this take.
Terrifier 2: The Official Movie Novelization is now available.