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Breaking into the horror genre is no easy feat, whether you’re a filmmaker or a fictional creation, because competition is plentiful and audience attention spans are limited. Makeup artist-turned filmmaker Damien Leone knows this all too well, but sixteen years after first introducing Art the Clown to the world (via the short film, “The 9th Circle”), both filmmaker and his creation are an undeniably bloody success. Terrifier 3 is new to theaters and delivering more of what the franchise has built its reputation on — incredibly brutal and gory kills at the hands of a silent and sadistic clown with a sick sense of humor.
It’s been five years since Sienna (Lauren LaVera) and her little brother Jonathan (Elliott Fullam) ended a horribly violent murder spree by beheading the supernaturally charged killer, Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton). Of course, the problem with supernatural killers is that killing them doesn’t typically last for long, and as the intro sequence shows — Art, dressed as Santa Claus, slaughters an entire family just a few nights before Christmas, and his ax doesn’t hesitate whether the victim is male, female, or a wee little kiddie — he’s back for some holiday-themed carnage. Sienna, fresh out of the psych ward, is forced to reluctantly saddle up again for another face off with face-painted evil.
If you’ve seen and enjoyed Leone’s indie box-office hit Terrifier 2 (2022), then just know that you’re in good, blood-soaked hands with Terrifier 3. Sienna works her way through the exposition side of things while Art slices, slashes, burns, hacks, and brutalizes his way through the supporting cast. While none of this film’s kills top the bedroom murder in the previous film on the sadism meter, fans of practical gore will have zero complaints here as Leone and friends once again commit some truly beautiful atrocities against human bodies. Now, if only he gave as much attention to the writing and pacing…
Complaining about the script with a film like this is a fool’s errand — Leone knows exactly what fans want, and he gives it to them in abundance — but this is the job. While Terrifier 2 was a massive step up from 2016’s Terrifier in regard to character and plot, it was still a half-hearted stab at creating a mythology. Terrifier 3 drops in a few more breadcrumbs, but it still feels like Leone’s making it all up as he goes along and lacks an actual narrative spine for Art, Sienna, and their journey together. Rules are floppy, the much ballyhooed magical sword guaranteed to “kill any evil” is still a flaccid MacGuffin, and worse, even at over two hours long, this feels like an incomplete chapter.
Instead, given the Christmas setting, Terrifier 3 feels like a sidestep for the franchise that fails to move the overall story along in exchange for a stopover slice of holiday horror. On that count, Leone succeeds fairly well, starting with that opening segment that sees “Santa” making a home visit. The holiday-themed production design is strong throughout, from this house to an explosive visit with a mall Santa complete with presents, impatient parents, and excited children. Art decorates a tree with intestinal garland at one point, but it still feels like a missed opportunity for far more Christmas-tinged kills.
While the characters still feel as empty as a disemboweled corpse, both LeVera and Thornton continue to impress as final girl and unstoppable killer, respectively. LeVera is once again put through the wringer, and she handles the genuine horror of it all with a balance of terror and ferocity. Thornton, meanwhile, represents everything we hate about mimes while also winning us over with his despicably cruel sense of humor and unquenchable thirst for bodily harm. Art may not be scary, but he’s unquestionably humorous at times and has a strong work/life balance you can’t help but applaud.
It’ll be a few more years before we know if the character of Art the Clown has truly conquered the horror zeitgeist to the point where he finds a home in pop culture, but there’s no denying the headway he’s made in a fairly short time. Two short films, two feature films — the last of which earned over $16 million in theaters on a $250k budget — have led him and us to Terrifier 3, a film almost guaranteed to continue that upward trend.
Terrifier 3 is a horror film for specific tastes, those interested in having some bleak and blackly comic fun with a murderous clown prone to committing graphic dismemberment and other acts of wanton cruelty. It’s not frightening, the narrative and characters are shallower than a scooped-out eye socket, and the cliffhanger ending is supremely disappointing after two hours, but Leone has a knack for thinking up the most painful, cringe-worthy, and graphically brutal assaults on a human body — and then bringing those ideas to exquisitely captured life. There’s a shower kill here that acknowledges the one in Pieces (1982) and then chainsaws it into oblivion. These are kills for horror fans who know it’s all fantasy and just want to have some very wet, very red fun on the big screen… and Leone is once again more than happy to oblige.