Terrifier Conference 2025

University of Warwick - 2-3 May 2025

Keynote speakers: Dr Shellie McMurdo (University of Hertfordshire) and Prof Louise Peacock (De Montfort University)

Terrifier 3 has defied all expectations, attracting widespread commercial and critical success, and becoming the number one film in the USA. Since the creation of Art the Clown in the short film The 9th Circle in 2008, the Terrifier franchise has gone from strength to strength, challenging some of the fundamental assumptions underpinning Hollywood filmmaking over this period. Damien Leone’s films, boasting low budgets, a grindhouse aesthetic and an impressive level of envelope-pushing gore (bolstered explicitly by practical effects), have turned Art and Sienna into modern horror icons and continued to unashamedly appeal to genre fans.

Given Terrifier 3’s smash success, the time is right for an event celebrating the franchise, its creator and its stars, and celebrating Terrifier as an object of scholarly importance. This symposium aims to critically engage with the Terrifier films, offering readings of the movies themselves but also engaging with the thematic content, the paratexts and the discourse surrounding these movies on the part of filmmakers, fans and critics.

Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers on topics exploring the Terrifier franchise. Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

• Close readings of the three Terrifier films

• Readings of Art the Clown/Sienna Shaw/Victoria Heyes/other key characters

• Terrifier and violence

• Terrifier aesthetics (80s horror/grindhouse/Christmas)

• The Terrifier franchise and gender

• Tropes and their subversions (the Final Girl, the slasher villain)

• Damien Leone and practical effects - the materiality of Terrifier

• Music (score music, and songs: ‘Clown Café’ and ‘It’s a Terrifier Christmas’)

• Physicality and performance - Art as clown

• Religion and the supernatural in the Terrifier films

• Marketing Terrifier, and fan/critic responses to the franchise

• Readings of the short films (The 9th Circle [2008]; Terrifier [2011]) and/or All Hallow’s Eve [2013]), or the All Hallow's Eve franchise

• Paratexts and Art beyond Terrifier (Ice Nine Kills’ ‘A Work of Art’, Terrifier: The ARTcade Game, Call of Duty)

The symposium is open to all (registration will be free), and will be a hybrid event - the Friday panels will take place online, and the Saturday panels will take place in person at the University of Warwick; there will also be a film screening that day, to be voted on by the attendees.

If you have any questions, please email Reece and Hannah at terrifierconference2025@gmail.com