What do you get when you cross a special-effects artist who has directorial ambitions with his underlying drive to create a new icon for the modern era of horror cinema? Easy – the highest-grossing unrated film (and film series) of all time and the latest addition to the Halloween Horror Nights Orlando 2025 roster.

It’s an announcement that, despite having been heavily rumored or outright hinted at over the past year-and-a-half, few actually took seriously – this is, after all, a franchise based primarily on gross-out gore and grotesque special-effects work, meaning its intensity level far outweighs that of the average (recent) HHN property. But Art the Clown, the “protagonist” of the Terrifier property, has truly become the newest inductee to the pantheon of horror legends, even breaching the pop-culture divide and landing in some rather mainstream spots, such as being a playable character in the absolutely mammoth Call of Duty videogame series – meaning that Universal is only too happy to hop on that momentum train and ride it all the way to the marketing station (which also helps explain the first Horror Nights property to be revealed this year, Five Nights at Freddy’s – though, obviously, this one resides on the whole other end of the horror/fan-appeal spectrum).

Here’s how Terrifier’s growing cultural traction has come about, and what it might mean for Horror Nights Orlando.

Where did Terrifier’s Art the Clown come from?

Art the Clown came about almost as an accident, a by-product of a series of short films that served, effectively, as a workshop for special-effects-artist-turned-director Damien Leone to refine and hone his newly fashioned slasher. For the first of these, 2008’s The 9th Circle, Leone crammed as many different horror staples as he could in the piece – a natural approach, given he wanted to populate the titular layer of Hell – but the one that caught the eye of audiences was Art, a simple clown who only glancingly appeared. This, naturally, led the filmmaker to select the as-yet-undeveloped character to be the sole subject of his next short, Terrifier (2011), and when both of these efforts ended up being released for free online – Damien kept getting rejected from various film festivals around the country – dear Art turned even more heads.

One of these belonged to a producer who was looking for such shorts to comprise a Halloween anthology movie that he wanted to put together, which would eventually be called All Hallows’ Eve and be released straight-to-DVD in 2013; Leone not only agreed to include both of his babies, he even talked his way into helming the third entry and the framing narrative segments, as well, sneaking the devilish clown, to one degree or another, into them all. It was off to the races for both properties from then on: this feature-length project became the stepping stone to a full-fledged Terrifier series of its own, while new Hallows’ follow-ups continue to this day (despite the fact that they all have been Art the Clown-less ever since).

What makes Art the Clown so noteworthy in modern cinematic horror?

Why make Art a clown, and why assign him to the slasher subgenre of horror?

The answer is short and simple: Damien Leone believed that neither one was particularly well served in film; slashers had mostly gone the way of the dinosaur since the end of their heyday in the ‘80s (minus such notable examples as the still-going Scream, which started up in the ‘90s), and the only cinematic clown of note has been Pennywise from Stephen King’s It (whose big-screen adaptation wouldn’t even arrive until 2017, four years after All Hallows’ Eve’s release). Given this dearth of competition, Leone went out of his way to make his creation as different as possible from King’s: whereas Pennywise is realized in full color, sports a bushel of hair, has verbal interactions with others, and is of otherworldly origin, Art is rendered strictly in black and white, completely bald, entirely non-vocal, and is a human serial killer – although, at various points in both the short- and feature-film series, he receives some supernatural assistance to remain in the murdering game.

(A brief point about the burgeoning icon being totally silent: the actor who would go on to ultimately portray the character in the full-length movies, David Howard Thornton, was a former mime, and, furthermore, he has studied the master silent performers of both the small and big screens, even going so far as to call the clown “an evil Mr. Bean.” Ironically enough, this imbues the character with a heaping helping of charisma, which undoubtedly helps explain yet another element to his broader fame.)

Art being (mostly) human, in fact, puts him squarely in the realm of the serial killer, a substantially more crowded field, and, as such, his creator worked hard to differentiate him in this regard, as well, having him brandish a wide variety of weaponry as opposed to primarily using one singature item, such as Jason Voorhees‘s machete or Freddy Kreuger’s claws. This allowed the new slasher to simultaneously dip his toes into the fetid waters of ’70s grindhouse exploitation movies (of which The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was the progenitor – an IP that is also getting its moment in the Universal-horror sun thanks to its presence over at Horror Unleashed in Las Vegas), another of Damien’s primary influences and North Stars for Terrifier.

All of which means that Art the Clown scratched a novel, nostalgic itch that many in the horror community had been apparently feeling for some time, priming him for his own feature-film series – and for his imminent stardom.

What is Terrifier?

That stardom, however, almost didn’t happen.

Despite having an ultra-indie budget of just $35,000, the first Terrifier (2018) failed its crowdfunding campaign – but, in a stroke of history repeating itself, a producer caught wind of the development and offered to fully fund the movie in exchange for Damien Leone teaching him special-effects makeups. By the time 2022’s Terrifier 2 hit IndieGoGo, it got five times its original goal, raking in $250,000; with 2024’s Terrifier 3 and impressively growing ticket sales, the filmmakers were well past the crowdsourcing stage, ballooning the budget to $2 million (which is still significantly below Hollywood standards, it should be noted) – and hauling in a global box office cume of $90 million, solidifying its status as a growing horror brand.

The story, such as it is, also started to expand, with Leone initially turning out a threadbare first entry that was designed mostly as a gore showcase as opposed to a fully-fleshed-out narrative; for the two subsequent sequels, he decided to build out something of a supporting cast for Art to play off of – and against, in the case of Sienna Shaw, a teenager bedecked in a Valkyrie costume who is angled by divine forces to become the crazed clown’s antithesis (this is a character that was originally considered for The 9th Circle‘s follow-up but was ultimately eschewed for an entirely different concept). There is now (more of) an overarching story that the franchise is building towards, meaning that, at some not-too-distant point, a final entry in the series will be at hand, presumably culminating in one final showdown between Sienna’s angel, on the one hand, and Art’s demon, on the other.

In the meantime, however, Terrifier continues to seep into other domains, including an “eulogy log” as a holiday promotional tie-in for the Christmas-themed Terrifier 3 on the horror streamer Screambox; a guest appearance – in a surreal dream sequence – on Pete Davidson’s short-lived Peacock series, Bupkis; and, of course, a growing collection of videogame crossovers, including the two Call of Duty titles of Warzone 2.0 and Modern Warfare III and, as of this October, his very own Terrifier: The ARTcade Game, which is a retro sidescrolling beat-’em-up in the vein of Splatterhouse and Double Dragon.

More than just being for fun (or for helping convince Universal to include the red-hot IP in its latest Halloween event), these extra cultural pop-ups can make for, or otherwise lead to, some interesting insights; in the case of Call of Duty, for instance, Art’s inclusion comes wtih a mini in-game biography that seems to perfectly sum up the essence of the character:

His targets seem random, but he seems particularly captivated by young women whom he often torments for extensive periods before killing them. His acts are not just murder; they are meticulously staged performances of cruelty that mirror his deranged clown character way of life.

One can’t get more succinct – or more erudite – than that.

How can Art the Clown – and Terrifer – be used in Halloween Horror Nights 2025?

When Terrifier takes haunted-house form at this year’s Halloween Horror Nights in both Orlando and Hollywood, Universal is promising the following:

Try your luck against Art the Clown in the Terrifier funhouse. You’ll witness his grotesque handiwork of torture and be exposed to the spatter of his victims. It’s a whole new level of gore!

Given the official description – and everything outlined above – it still seems fitting to ask how, and to what degree, Art the Clown’s gore-filled antics will translate to Universal Studios Florida this fall. There is the very real chance that this property may become the next Quiet Place from 2024’s event; originally promised to have a dynamic experience that responded to the level of sound the guest generated in the maze, it ended up being, for better or worse, just a standard-issue haunt (albeit one festooned with larger-than-life puppets to represent the lethal extraterrestrial lifeforms from the films).

Then again, according to Ramon Paradoa, the show director and writer for the Terrifier maze, this might not be the case at all:

The “goriest experience in Halloween Horror Nights history”? Luckily, fans won’t have to wait too long to see for themselves – HHN Orlando kicks off its 49-night run on August 29 (which ends on November 2). Joining Terrifier on the IP haunted-house roster will be Jason Universe, Fallout, and Five Nights at Freddy’s.

For even more in-depth historical analysis like this, be sure to check out Horrors Untold, the unofficial, comprehensive guide to HHN Orlando.

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