From cult cinema carnage to box office slasher success, the gore genre will enter the mainstream with the world’s first symposium on the Terrifier slasher film franchise, held at The University of Warwick.

Since the creation of Art the killer clown in the short film The 9th Circle in 2008, Damien Leone’s Terrifier franchise has gone from strength to strength, challenging fundamental assumptions underpinning Hollywood filmmaking. With confirmation that the script for Terrifier 4 is underway, Leone’s body (of work) is now ripe for academic dissection.

The Terrifier Conference 2025 will welcome global scholars to Warwick to take an alternative approach to enthusiastic critical dismemberment by engaging with the Terrifier film franchise as an object of scholarly importance.

Dr Reece Goodall, a Director of Student Experience at The University of Warwick, and Terrifier Conference 2025 co-organiser said: “The incredible success of Terrifier 3 has cemented Art the Clown as a modern horror icon and creator Damien Leone as an independent horror auteur. We’re thrilled that The University of Warwick is hosting Terrifier 2025, a two-day event exploring the franchise, and the wealth of topics and countries represented in the programme speaks to the scholarly importance in engaging with those films that aim to terrify us.”

Presented online and in person (Friday 2 and Saturday 3 May), this unique international conference examines the blood-soaked franchise’s presentation of aesthetics, neurodivergence, women, subverted tropes - and the silent menace of horror icon Art, the killer clown.

Featuring contributions from academics from Ukraine, Italy, Brazil, Canada, France, US, India and the UK, the conference will explore the construction of practical visceral gore effects, aesthetically appraise kill scene carnage, and discuss the unsettling visual creepiness and comedy violence of clown performance.

The symposium will also hear from the access material producers for Terrifier 3 on how they brought the films’ visual and audio landscapes to life to hearing and visually impaired audiences, and from the UK distributors about the marketing and social media approaches that drove a gross take of £3.4m.

The gathering will culminate on Saturday at 19.30 with the screening of one of the Terrifier films as voted for by the attendees.

Find out more: Conference Programme

ENDS

Attached image credit: Courtesy of Dark Age Cinema / Signature Entertainment

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About The University of Warwick
The University of Warwick is one of the UK’s leading universities, marking its 60th anniversary in 2025. With over twenty-eight thousand students from 147 countries, it's currently ranked 9th in the UK by The Guardian University Guide.

It has an acknowledged reputation for excellence in research and teaching, for innovation, and for links with business and industry. The recent Research Excellence Framework classed 92% of its research as ‘world leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’.

The University of Warwick was awarded Midlands University of the Year by The Times and Sunday Times.