Terrifier 2 has been submitted for Oscars consideration, for the bit
Art The Clown is officially in contention (sort of) for an Academy Award
Damien Leone’s Terrifier 2 was one of the big success stories of the recent Spooky Season, having pulled that beautiful horror movie trick of making several million dollars at the box office off of a miniscule budget, spent largely, as far as we can tell, on clown make-up, and some of the most gruesome murder sequences in recent memory. Now, distributor Bloody Disgusting is looking to extend the film’s moderately successful reign—and build a bit more of that queasy word-of-mouth that’s done the movie so much good—by announcing today that it’s submitting the film to the Oscars.
Even the distributors are pretty clear on the fact that they’re doing this as a joke; we probably don’t have to worry about watching Art The Clown stare down Cate Blanchett at the Dolby Theater any time soon. (Although, as Bloody Disgusting notes, it’s not entirely unprecedented for a horror film to make a dent at the Oscars; The Exorcist won two awards back in 1974, and An American Werewolf In London was nominated for best hair and make-up in 1982.) Also, it’s apparently very easy to nominate a movie for the Oscars—you just have to be a producer or distributor on the film—so there’s definitely a certain “Fuck it, why not?” energy to the whole enterprise.
Here’s part of the BD article announcing the move:
In all seriousness, it’s absolutely insane that this ultra-slasher is actually playing in theaters across the country. The film managed to escape into mainstream theaters completely uncut and gory as can be. We broke all the rules and fans rewarded us with tremendous support that shook the system to its core.
Among other things, the write-up notes that Terrifier 2's expansion over the Halloween weekend—bringing it into a total of 1,500 theaters across the US—is the largest release an unrated horror movie has ever gotten.