A lot has changed in the past two years since the release of Terrifier 2. No one really cared about Art the Clown when I wrote the previous review, yet now you’ll suddenly find his face plastered amongst t-shirts on the wall at Hot Topic or Spencer’s Gifts stores. You no longer have to seek out niche (heh) streaming services like Screambox to see that thing you’ve heard vague whispers about. You know what that means, kids: Terrifier has officially gone from being a cult classic to being a bandwagon mainstream success. Congrats to Damien Leone, Terrifier 3 is (as of the time of this review) the #1 movie in America. However, with notoriety comes change, and with that, Terrifier 3 betrays itself to welcome in the newcomers.
Terrifier 3 (2024)
Production Companies: Dark Age Cinema, Bloody Disgusting, Fuzz on the Lens Productions, The Cove
Director: Damien Leone
Release Date: October 11, 2024 (Theatrical), TBD (Streaming)
Terrifier 3 starts with an all-too-familiar scene. A family is preparing for Christmas, while a little girl hears a sound on the roof that she thinks might be Santa. As you’ve guessed, it isn’t. It’s Santa Art, and he’s here to bring tidings of good cheer and dismemberment.
After sneaking upstairs and hacking up a young boy in his bed (not shown, but you hear the sounds of the axe), Art moves into the bedroom and slaughters the dad in bed, to which the mom wakes up and freaks out and takes off running.
She runs back and forth looking for the children, finally running into the little boy’s room, unveiling the results of Art’s craftsmanship. She naturally shrieks and then runs downstairs, only to ultimately meet her demise while trying to escape the locked front door.
After dispatching an innocent family (aside from the aforementioned little girl named Juliet), Santa Art enters the kitchen for milk and cookies. Juliet’s fate is left unknown.
While this sequence is fairly par for the course for Terrifier, ultimately, it was a waste of 20 minutes or so as it has nothing to do with the narrative they’re trying to tell. There’s no real reason for Art’s Grinch-like sequence other than the shock value because he killed a little boy.
They had the perfect opportunity to tie this to the story later on. Spoiler alert: They didn’t, and this is the first in a chain of events that made Terrifier 3 feel like it’s two different movies that have been cobbled together because they weren’t sure how to tell a story more efficiently.
Continuing five years after the events of Terrifier 2, Sienna Shaw is being released from the mental hospital she’s been in and out of and is going to live with her aunt and uncle. Also in the mix is her younger brother Jonathan, who looks like he’s 13 but is suddenly a freshman in college.
While Sienna has at least been trying to treat her trauma, he’s buried it all and ignores it, leading to moments of tension between the siblings when Sienna discovers that Art survived and is in their new town.
While we’re all being bored to death with Sienna’s attempts to get reacclimated to normal life outside of the mental health facility, there’s a section of the movie that goes back five years and shows what happens to Art and Vicky after the mid-credits scene from the end of Terrifier 2.
Vicky and Art’s head eat the nurse and Vicky kills Chris Jericho in a sequence that feels like footage they intentionally left behind to use in the sequel. Afterward, Art’s body gets up after being killed and returns to his head, killing a policeman in the process.
The now fully reconstructed Art and Vicky retreat to an abandoned house where Art sits in a chair as Vicky jumps in a bathtub and splits her wrists. Five years later, construction workers come in and essentially wake Art and Vicky up so they can return to their tour of terror. This is where Terrifier’s over-the-top level of gore starts to lose the plot as it previously felt realistic but now just looks Army of Darkness levels of silly. And why the hell were Art and Vicky just willing to just go dormant for years anyway?
Speaking of the gore, Terrifier’s biggest hook wasn’t the overindulgence of gore, but rather the inventive ways that Art dispatches people. The way he’s clearing sections of the girl’s leg in Terrifier 2 is still one of the grossest horror movie gore moments I can remember seeing.
While there are a few jarring moments (one depicting Vicky doing horribly unimaginable things with a giant shard of glass), this movie is full of seemingly generic Axe kills, and forced returns to the previous installments, including an old familiar scene from the original Terrifier now essentially recreated with chainsaw sodomy.
Meanwhile, the other person in this scene basically does nothing to defend themselves, which makes an already ridiculous scene that much more unbelievable. I’d even argue that the events that unfold in the new Ice Nine Kills video is more inventive than a majority of the events that take place in Terrifier 3, and as you’d expect, Art is absolutely tremendous in this as well.
I enjoyed Terrifier 2 quite a bit, but one of my biggest complaints was that it’s way too long and Terrifier 3 repeats this same mistake in order to cater to newcomers and tourists. There’s so many flashbacks and homages to the original two movies that simple tasks that probably should have been shown on screen are little more than minor footnotes in the plot.
Without watching the Terrifier 2 director’s commentary (or looked up a write-up), there’s still a bunch of unanswered questions that arise during the events of the film’s climax. I guess that’s to be expected though when the third movie in a franchise becomes the one people actually go to see as their introduction to the character. Tourists ruin everything, man.
It’s a shame that Terrifier 3 spends so much time trying to craft a story for the people who need everything spoon-fed to them, because it lead to a movie that’s extremely boring to slog through every single moment that Art isn’t on the screen.
David Howard Thornton’s portrayal of Art the Clown is by far the best it’s ever been in Terrifier 3, but it’s a tragic disservice to how great he is by how disconnected Art is from the overarching story that’s being told.
The scene of Art being obsessed with Santa and how he got his Santa costume might have been cut in other horror films where the antagonist isn’t so endearing, but here it’s brutal and utterly satisfying because every moment Art’s on the screen is 100% better than the moments without him.
In fact, by the time these two movies finally connect in the final half hour, I was chomping at the bit for more Art and less Sienna, that I found myself cheering for the bad guys. I giggled with delight every time Art slapped Sienna upside the head, and I couldn’t help but smile when another one of the more gruesome kills that takes place came to life exactly the way I expected it to. You’re not supposed to make the audience root for the killer, guys.
Terrifier 3 would have been a whole lot better with about 30 mins of story and 60 minutes of Art’s antics. The feeling is still there, but this movie feels like they’re taking a breath to onboard the bandwagon before going back to pushing the envelope with an inevitable Terrifier 4.
Making this film more approachable is a massive step in the wrong direction, as it really shines brightest when it grabs you by the face and says “get in loser, we’re going for a ride”. I’m disappointed with this entry, but Art is so good I’m willing to give them another chance to get back on track. Give me more Terrifier 1 and far less Terrifier 3.
TERRIFIER 3 is now in theaters from Cinedigm. Niche Gamer purchased tickets and went to a theater showing of Terrifier 3 for the purposes of this review. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here.
