How does one even begin to talk about a movie like Terrifier 3? Do you make an appeal to a general audience and entice them to step out of their boundaries a little, or cater specifically to the fans of the series and other gory slaughterhouse flicks like it? Does the latter group even need a review before they go see the movie? Does the former really want to know any more about it than they’ve already picked up secondhand?
Or do we start with the fact that Terrifier 3 was the top performing movie in its opening weekend, outselling fellow clown the Joker’s Folie Et Deux and Dreamworks’ animated offering The Wild Robot?
Terrifier 3
Directed By: Damien Leone
Written By: Damien Leone
Starring: Lauren LaVera, David Howard Thornton
Release Date: In theaters October 11, 2024
All else aside, it’s important to start with the fact that there’s a reason this movie was not brought to the MPA to be rated for a reason. If you didn’t know what you were getting into when you saw the scary clown on the featured image, let me make it abundantly clear to you now: If you are someone with a general low threshold for violence, gore, and anything gruesome, you are not going to have a good time with Terrifier 3. Don’t bring the kids, and don’t bring grandma (unless Grandma’s a real freak like that, I don’t judge.)
Violent, but (mostly) with care
If you’re here, you’re here for the gore, and in that avenue, Terrifier 3 delivers in abundance. Director Damien Leone has made a name for himself with the practical effects of these films, and the third installment does not disappoint. Art the Clown’s Christmastime rampage is painstakingly well-crafted with an attention to detail that brings me back to old school Raimi and the Evil Dead movies. Whether or not the effects look real is second to the fact that they look effective, with all the splatters and visual presence that no computer graphics could properly emulate. The violence is visceral, and the practical effects help sell that just as much as anything.
And boy, is it visceral. Leone really pulled out all the stops in Terrifier 3, cranking the levels of violence up to places the series has never before reached, and this is a series that known primarily for its depictions of violence and gore already. Without going into any of the bloody details, Terrifier 3 sees Art the Clown taking to his victims with glee and creative abandon (at least when he’s not just shooting them in the head.)
This movie may have even been the one to finally push it too far. For so many reasons, I will not go into detail in this review, but there is a scene within the first third of the film that truly repulsed me in a way that really worried me as to what else I would be bearing witness to going forward. The usual gore-horror escapades are something I’m familiar and even comfortable with, but this particular scene veers much closer into the direction of sexual violence than I am at all fond of. Thankfully, it was the only one of its kind, and the rest of the movie stuck to its more generalized ultraviolence that I was more prepared and ready to see.
A plot less put-together than Art’s victims
On the opposite side of the gore-horror coin, if someone’s going to sit down and watch Terrifier 3, they’re probably not doing it for the gripping plot or deep-seated lore. This film, however, insists that you should be, taking long breaks from the action to provide additional background to Art’s antics.
The movie follows the protagonist of the previous film, Sienna (Lauren LaVera), coming to live with her aunt and uncle after being released from the mental hospital five years after the events of the second movie. Sienna attempts to deal with the trauma of her encounter with Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) while having a nice, uneventful Christmas with her new family. Art has other ideas, however, returning after their seemingly less-than-fatal battle to make the streets of Miles County run red once more.
Ultimately, the movie’s reliance on moving forward a storyline may be its downfall. Not only does the exposition tend to break up the pacing in noticeable ways, the third act of the movie felt incredibly rushed. The entire final scene of the film happens with such suddenness that, with the context of the scenes before, almost feels like it isn’t really happening at all. I easily spent the first half of it waiting for Sienna to wake up and the real horrors to begin.
All of this, combined with an obvious cliffhanger for a part four, leave the movie feeling a little more hollow in this department than I would have liked. Terrifier 1 was probably too light on plot, but Terrifier 2 managed to hit a sweet spot between gore and story that kept me hooked from start to finish. Terrfier 3, meanwhile, leans a bit too heavily in the wrong direction, forcing its narrative to compete with its violence-filled payoffs for the viewer’s attention.
Passable acting with a clown-painted cherry on top
The performances land somewhere past decent, on average. LaVera’s depiction of the not-quite-sane Sienna is noticeably strong, and her new co-star Antonella Rose (Fear the Walking Dead) provides a seemingly-endless source of spunk as Sienna’s cousin Gabbie.
Once again, however, it is Thornton’s portrayal of Art the Clown that takes center stage. Art is an unstoppable force of destruction, but an equally unstoppable font of mirth and glee, and Thornton captures these two sides of the character in a way that is truly admirable. It’s black humor, to be sure, but it is still nearly impossible not to laugh at the faces and reactions of Art as he goes about his bloody business. This is a man (if he can even be called as such) who truly enjoys what he does. It even serves an important moviegoing function as well: Art gives us something to react to when the actual scene is too heinous to properly process. We may not know how to deal with what he just did with that chainsaw, but we do know how entertained (and thus, entertaining) he was while doing it.
If you want to go see Terrifier 3, you probably don’t need to see my review on it. If you’ve no interest whatsoever in movies like Terrifier 3, this one is not going to change your mind on it. But if you were, for some reason, passably interested but on the fence, there’s a lot to enjoy here if this is the kind of movie you’re after.
Terrifier 3 absolutely knows what its good at, and it does not hold back in that area. While it has you, though, it also wants to make you sit through a lot of stuff it isn’t quite so skilled at, as well.
Terrifier 3 released to theaters on October 11, 2024.
