Terrifier 3 | 2024
David Howard Thornton as Art the Clown in TERRIFIER 3.
The Terrifier franchise is a fascinating cultural phenomenon. It originated in a 2011 short film by director Damien Leone, about a series of murders committed by a psychotic mime named Art. Leone later used Art the Clown as the connective tissue for a 2013 anthology film called All Hallows Eve before adapting Terrifier into a low-budget feature in 2016.
Art, with his demented sense of humor and unsettlingly sudden mood shifts, became something of a cult figure. This led to a crowdfunded sequel that received a limited theatrical release in 2022. The release of Terrifier 2, a two-and-a-half-hour onslaught of sadistic brutality, was when the mainstream started to take notice, as tales of audience members vomiting, fainting, and leaving the theater due to the extreme blood and gore. An underground word-of-mouth hit was born - a test of mettle for horror fans that had to be experienced. Like any slasher franchise worth its salt, another sequel was all but inevitable.
With Terrifier 3, Leone has upped the ante once again, delivering blood, guts, and, um...other organs, by the bucket-full. The film picks up years after the events of Terrifier 2, as final girl Sienna (Lauren LaVera) and her brother, Jonathan (Elliott Fullam) struggle to adjust to life after surviving the horrific events of the previous film. Sienna has gone to celebrate Christmas with extended family, while she and Jonathan continue to research her connection to Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) and how she defeated him. All the while, Art is cutting a swath of bloody destruction across the sleepy suburb, putting him and his accomplice, Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi) on a crash course to ruin Sienna's holiday and deck the halls with boughs of intestines.
David Howard Thornton and Krsy Fox in TERRIFIER 3.
I understand the appeal of these movies. There's an undeniable fascination with seeing just how far they will push the violence; I'm just not convinced they're particularly clever or even well-made. The Terrifier films are basically modern-day Herschel Gordon Lewis movies, splatter films designed to do little more than give the audience a glimpse at the horrific by giving them blood, gore, and lots of it. Lewis was a sideshow huckster, an exploitation filmmaker extraordinaire, the poor man's Roger Corman. He was not a good filmmaker - but he wasn't trying to be. Leone feels like he's trying to create a new modern horror mythology, but he's HGL at heart.
Art the Clown is an ingenious creation, part Little Tramp, part Leatherface, a slasher villain who is actually funny while simultaneously being genuinely frightening. But the films, especially 2 and 3, are just so relentless that they constantly box themselves into a corner. They don't have beginnings, middles, or endings; they simply exist, delivering cruelty and sadism on an increasingly epic scale. It's hard not to be impressed by the sheer bloody spectacle, with Art as our demented master of ceremonies. It just makes for an exhausting experience, as Leone continues to try to build in convoluted supernatural mythology that feels like the kind of thing slasher franchises come up with in their later installments once they've worn the concept thin.
On the other hand, I love how these movies look and feel - like grainy, old-school exploitation sleaze. You almost feel dirty watching them - they're the kind of movies you'd watch in a drive-in or a dingy grindhouse. I just wish they had better pacing. Even classic slashers mostly had endings, even with the requisite setups for the next entry in the franchise. Terrifier films just kind of stop, and in its zeal to constantly top itself, much like its predecessor, Terrifier 3 is often a numbing experience. The kills don't have time to have an impact because it moves on to the next, even more horrifying, piece of butchery; and yet I can't look away from them. There's an undeniable appeal to what Leone is doing here; a sick and horrific look at the darkest depths of human cruelty and depravity. It feels a bit like rubbernecking at the scene of a car wreck; you know you shouldn't, but the morbid curiosity is too strong to ignore. I just wish they were better movies. I get why people like them as a throwback to the glory days of grindhouse horror; Terrifier 3 nails that aesthetic perfectly. In most cases, however, the movies it's emulating weren't very good either, and the results are a mixed bag of ungainly world-building and a seemingly endless parade of gruesome kills that would be shocking if taken on their own but quickly fade amongst the never-ending carnage.
