2024 | Unrated (hard R equivalent) | starring Lauren Lavera, David Howard Thornton, Samantha Scaffidi, Antonella Rose, Elliott Fullam | written & directed by Damien Leone | 2h 5m | 3 1/2 out of 5 stars |
The meteoric rise of Terrifier from a grind house exploitation flick to being the savior of modern horror and a rallying cry against bloated, message-driven, bait-and-switch Hollywood has been stunning to behold. Most of the weight for that is carried by Terrifier 2, Dameon Leone’s epic, indulgent, surreal, 5-alarm juggernaut of a horror movie that I handed 5 stars to back in 2022. This was the type of movie that was made out of genre love that exploded off the screen, but also desperation, a “I may never get to make another movie like this” Hail Mary pass that had Leone put everything and the kitchen sink into his story of the killer clown and the avenging angel who would rise up to fight him. Most of the fun, and secondhand emotional pride, came from the leap from the plotless, nihilistic first film to a more character-focused story of the second film. Horrifying, often hilarious and cryptically supernatural, Terrifier 2 remains a pillar of the genre.
That kind of leap in quality isn’t required for Terrifier 3. Leone has his characters firmly established, his lore set up to for any number of supernatural payoffs and the tone of the films down pat. Terrifier 3 has less to prove, simply becoming another reason to watch David Howard Thornton’s classically superb performance as Art the Clown silently mug and brutalize his way through a series of new characters across a new setting. None of that is a problem when it’s as much fun as this movie is.
The film picks up immediately after the events of Terrifier 2 in which Art the Clown’s head was reanimated by demonically possessed Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi) and spent the next 4 years hibernating in a rocking chair waiting to be reactivated and enact his revenge against Sienna Shaw (Lauren Lavera). In the meantime, Sienna is out of rehab and moves in with her Aunt, Uncle and cousin Gabbie (Antonella Rose) who idolizes her. She tries to reconnect with brother Jonathan (Elliott Fullam) now going to college who wants nothing to do with this despite a podcast fangirl wanting to interview them both about the famous “Miles County Clown Massacre”. As Christmas approaches Art is rampaging around the town, meeting a department store Santa in a bar and adopting his persona as he and Victoria plot out their revenge.
The acting in this movie is far better than it should be, with Lavera giving a legitimately good performance even as Sienna is kept in traumatic victim mode most of the film. As the family scenes drag and drag and drag, Art’s Santa evolution is hilarious. This movie’s version of the Costume Shop Scene is the Bar scene in which Art really seems to believe he is meeting the real Santa Clause and acts like a thrilled child for most of the time. This character is so strong you can drop him in any new situation and watch him go. The movie is full of horror Easter eggs from homages to movies like Black Chrismtas to cameos from special effects legend Tom Savini. I was delighted to see Kailey Hyman return as Brooke if only for a blood-drenched hallucination. Turning Terrifier into a Christmas movie seems like the most natural thing in the world. Not only did the way Art drudge around with a garbage bag over his shoulder always look like a demented Santa Clause, but the 2nd film’s overt religious symbolism of heaven, hell, angels and demons creates a nice segue into flipping Christmas iconography on it’s head for ghastly results (Victoria spends much of the film wearing a crown of thorns).
However, it went along a couple of issues started nagging at me about the film, namely the pacing and the editing. I get that Leone is trying to parallel Art and Sienna, but the constant cross-cutting between the two does the film no favors. The pattern goes like this: Sienna talks to Gabbie about her grief, cut to elaborate, gruesome, hilarious set piece of Art as a Mall Santa, cut back to Sienna finishing her conversation with Gabbie. The cross-cutting serves no narrative or thematic purpose other than to break up the obvious exposition and makes time stand still for Sienna. My other issue is the way the kills are shot. Yes, the kills, the highlight of these movies in which characters are turned into bloody piles of flesh. Most of the kills are shot in close-up. An arm severed here, a leg broken there. A shot of a chainsaw going through an abdomen. I feel like so much of the power of the kills in Terrifier 2 came from the fact that you also saw the actors in the scene reacting to the carnage. In this movie it feels stitched together in the edit, and frankly claustrophobic. There are scenes in this movie that could have rivaled that one, particularly the Terrifier twist on the classic slasher movie shower scene, but it feels butchered in an over-edit.
Leone delivers something different and truly sensational for the film’s grand finale, one that finds how inspired the Bad Cop/Worse Cop pairing of Art and Victoria is. Terrifier 3 a great sequel, that continues to build the movies wacky demonic lore while not retreading the previous films. It’s got a higher production value than the previous, but still retains that grind house 80s feel. Leone knows how to stretch a frigging dollar, even setting the movie at Christmas so he can use public domain Christmas music is a stroke of genius. The pure joy and surprise of Terrifier 2 cannot be replicated, but 3 proves there is still a tank full of gas in this series – and a lot more holidays for Art the Clown to destroy. I’m at a 3 1/2 but I could probably be talked into a 4.