Creating a modern horror icon

After settling on the main concept of the movie, Damien Leone decided to make Art the Clown as different as possible to other killer clowns in the horror space, particularly with the likes of Pennywise the Dancing Clown from Stephen King’s ‘It’.

As a result, the director purposefully made Art’s appearance and mannerisms completely unique. For instance, the character wears all black and white, doesn’t have hair, isn’t afraid to use human weapons and is completely silent.

The filmmaker explained he made made these choices because he felt like the 2010s were lacking an iconic horror clown.

He said: “Art is ultimately my tribute to everything I loved about slasher movies growing up. I wanted to take familiar elements that we all embraced from American horror movies combined with the graphic violence and atmosphere of Giallo films — hopefully creating something fresh and exciting at the end of the day.”