Film Review: Terrifier 3

Terrifier 3
Director: Damien Leone
Bloody Disgusting, Dark Age Cinema, Fuzz on the Lens Productions
In Theaters: 10.11

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and the cinephile’s favorite dementedly deranged clown is back for a cacophony of carnage. Two years since the release of the masterpiece that is Terrifier 2, Damien Leone and his infamous Art the Clown welcome us back into the world of Terrifier with bloodsoaked arms outstretched. Whether you’ve been a chronically online Art the Clown lore follower or a casual splatter horror viewer, there’s something for everyone in Terrifier 3.

Terrifier 3 picks up five years after the events of Terrifier 2, starting off with a healthy dose of family annihilation, a pinch of pregnancy fetishism and the release of Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera, Dispatches from Elsewhere, Iron Fist) from one of her many hospital stays. Sienna goes to stay with her aunt Jess (Margaret Anne Florence, Sun Records), Uncle Greg (Bryce Johnson, Darkness Rising) and their daughter Gabbi (Antonella Rose, Fear the Walking Dead). While there, Sienna tries to overcome her survivor’s guilt and rebuild her relationship with her brother Johnathan (Elliott Fullam, Terrifier 2). This all comes to a screeching bloody halt with the rebirth and return of Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton, The Mean One) to Miles County with his new sidekick, Victoria Heyes (Samantha Scaffidi, Demon Hole), in tow. 

When a filmmaker puts as much love and painstaking care into something like the Terrifier series, it’s hard to find things to criticize. Damien Leone has been firing on all creative cylinders since the release of All Hallow’s Eve. He’s written, directed, edited and contributed to the SFX work for all of the three of the Terrifier films while maintaining an excellently built fictional world with a coherent plotline and likable antihero. Leone has solved the slasher legacy equation. However, I couldn’t help but leave my Terrifer 2 and 3 double feature feeling as though the newest installment didn’t nearly have the impact on me that Terrifier 2 had. 

While the grotesque and campy kills are still over the top and traumatizing, they didn’t nearly have all the impact and fun that the film’s predecessors had with its carnage. Though that attic scene will most definitely haunt your waking hours after your initial viewing, it brings up a question in the horror genre: Where is the line between some bloody non-serious fun and downright mean-spirited “leaves a bad taste” violence? There’s also not enough time with plot development being thrown at us to enjoy all of Art’s fantastical brutality. 

Leone also attempts to expand on his final girl’s—and Art’s—lore. But, our beloved clown tends to take a backseat to his salacious sidekick Victoria during the film’s 128 minute runtime. The most common mistake present day horror filmmakers run into, as we see in Terrifier 3, is feeling the need to explain an unexplainable evil. We don’t need to know who Art is or where he comes from. He’s just a murderously evil and supernatural clown who finds humor in brutalizing innocent people in comical ways. I don’t need to know whether or not he’s a demon from the ninth circle of Hell. If I saw Art the Clown on the street, I’d be shitting my pants regardless of if I know his full government name or not. 

All that being said, Terrifier 3 is a damn good exercise in filmmaking. While it is nowhere close to the spectacle that was Terrifier 2 at the time of its release, it’s pretty damn close and a damn fun time. Let’s just hope that the Terrifier franchise doesn’t fall into the same rigged snares and bear traps of the slasher series before it. –Yonni Uribe

Read more blood-soaked horror reviews:
Film Review: The Night Eats the World
Film Review: The Substance