‘Terrifier 3’ Unwraps a Holiday Bloodbath that Slashes Expectations!
It’s Halloween time again and that means another… hey wait? This film is a Christmas slasher… released before Halloween in theatres… and it’s beating Joker 2 at the box office? That is funny! That’s right! Art the Clown is back for Terrifier 3 in this third installment from virtuoso Damien Leone.
Let me tell you, no franchise has gotten us more riled up against each other’s opinions around Severed Cinema than the Terrifier series. There are a lot of strong opinions all around. Some prefer the second one. Some prefer the first Terrifier. Some hated the second, and some loved this third installment to their surprise. We are definitely all at loggerheads over Damien Leone as a director who is still jockeying for his place in slasher, deviant horror pantheon. But we’re also definitely talking about him and this franchise whenever a new one comes out!
Let us focus in on a picturesque Christmas night. Tree nicely decorated. Four stockings. Husband and Wife are in bed. Not a creature is stirring, except… a shadow crosses the wife’s face. It’s their daughter. She is hearing footsteps on the roof. Mommy doesn’t hear it and dismisses it. Maybe it’s Santa Claus checking the safety requirements for Christmas.
To assuage the child they leave cookies and milk. But now the mother hears noises too on the roof. Then a little adult chitchat and it’s off to sleep. The daughter is still curious and goes downstairs to catch Santa in the act. A shadow moves around downstairs to which the daughter optimistically believes is Santa himself.
She then wakes up her older brother Timmy to go see Santa downstairs with her. He tells her to go away.
Downstairs again she approaches and facing the tree (face unseen) is a menacing guy in a Santa suit. Jolly Ol’ Saint Nick reaches into his bag and… reveals an axe. (Cindy Lou Who better hightail that shit!) She ducks and hides as Axe Santa goes upstairs methodically. He opens brother’s door and celery, and watermelon sounds abound! And that’s a wrap for lil bro as the lights go out and the axe is now covered in blood.
Onto Mummy and Papa. Pappy gets the chop first and wifey is still sound asleep until it registers. She darts awake, blood all over her with our old friend now, Art the Clown, dressed as Santa, laughing at her in mime.
She runs out to her son’s room (nothing like choosing your favorite child in a crisis). He’s had every limb severed from the torso. The mother screams to high heaven.
Art does a little Shining homage in the axed doorway then continues the pursuit. She runs downstairs but is chopped in the back, bleeding profusely, to Art’s delight. Then to the stomach, more gushing blood. Then he chops an arm systematically. Then right down the skull’s center with a sharp, pang sound so the audience can feel it.
Then the heavenly choir sings “Come all Ye Faithful” as Art eats the cookies and milk. He opens a little cupboard drawer, and the little daughter is there. Art waves to her with a bloody hand and smile on his clown face. We see the blood-soaked axe. Implicit is the carnage.
Title card: “5 Years Ago”
A cop searches abandoned buildings to find the headless clown corpse of presumably Art the Clown. It comes to life and strangles the cop to death.
Subway ad for haunted hayrides.
Headless Art puts the black cop’s head on his missing head spot of the black cop. A bag lady just observes.
Back to Chris Jericho who was an attending orderly to a psych ward in the special ending sequence at the end of Terrifier 2 (see review of Terrifier 2 here). Some cheesy Sci-Fi is playing. I can’t identify it by sight alone which bothers me. My best guess is it’s Plan 9 From Outer Space. But whatever. Some goofy shit.
Jericho enters a cell after hearing a woman scream down the hall and the interviewer who had her face ripped off in the earlier films is eating the leg flesh off someone as the head of Art the Clown bites the face of the same victim. Right into the face.
The freaky interviewer, we later learn is named Vicky, possessed by demons, and with destroyed face, reaches out for Jericho and laughs in blood-soaked hysterics. The headless body waves to Y2K now. But interviewer lady attacks.
Jericho punches her to no effect. Jericho’s face is ripped off.
The interviewer, whose pulverized face suggests she might be Vicky (as hinted by an “Art Loves Vicky” carving on a nearby wall), sits on the subway alongside Art and his reattached head. A fan dressed as Art the Clown admires them for their “costumes.” They return the praise by smiling for the selfie. “Seriously. You guys killed it.” (With the look that is).
Vicky (the interviewer with the mutilated face) enjoys squeezing Art’s bicycle horn. Art is annoyed by this. Vicky cackles hideously as she tends to do. She starts to play with the rats. Art is nonplussed. Later Vicky looks at her deformed face in the mirror as Art gets depressed and sits in a broke old rocking chair. Vicky makes gross faces in the mirror. Then gets rage-filled and smashes the mirror with headbutts and fists. She picks up a piece of broken glass and sits down in the bloody bathtub in that familiar way and is about to slit her wrists properly, hand to bicep. Blood pours out realistically. She waits, sitting. Art waits, rocking in his chair.
Caption: “Your Days“
Sunny Valley either mental health or retirement home. I’m guessing mental health?!
A boyfriend is picking up the heroin from Terrifier 2, Sienna Shaw. We discover in the car she’s visiting her niece, Gabby, with this uncle-in-law apparently. Sienna hasn’t spent much time with her for whatever reason. “Big sister from another mister” is referenced…? I genuinely give up. They’re related some how.
Back to Art’s house 5 years later… anyone dead yet?
Demolition experts arrive out front. They enter the premises. Tell some haunted story to scare each other about killers in this house from the ‘90s. Plus, something smells bad in the house…
Flashback of Sienna as a child asking her dad, the comic artist, to make a female comic hero. Gabby meanwhile reads from Sienna’s diary asking what a clown cafe is. A bad place, she replies.
Back to the demolition guys. One of them finds Art in cobwebs still in that rocking chair. The other guy finds Vicky in the tub, presumed dead and decrepit.
All this time later, and they spring to life. Art from his rocker and Vicky literally from the rotten flesh of the bathtub. She stabs him with the glass she slit her wrists with 5 years earlier, presumably.
Art bites a man’s fingers off, scalps him, and nails the guy’s hand to the floor. Vicky begins masturbating with the broken glass in her hand. Blood gushing on the floor. She gets off just as Art rips his face off. That really makes her pleased.
Back to Siena and her sister from a different mister enjoying a meal. Until her dead friend from part 2, the one from the Halloween rave who spiked her with MDMA, appears a complete bloody mess to guilt her for leading her to her demise. She blames the meds for seeing her dead, mutilated friend.
Siena’s little brother, Jonathan (Elliott Fullam) returns and interrupts a college roommate make out session. The dude with the girl says his girlfriend is obsessed with the County Clown. And true crime shit. The girl wants him on a true crime podcast. Jonathan says he’ll think about it.
Siena calls her little brother to confirm they’re meeting soon. Gabby then asks Siena if she’s okay but it’s just the meds apparently that makes you see dead friends you got killed is all. Art meanwhile freezes a rat with liquid nitrogen and smashes it to pieces.
An old man in a Santa suite and Clint Howard (was Ted Raimi busy?) are at a bar and they’re with two hot girls who dig the Santa suit. The girls soon leave but lucky for them Art the Clown appears.
Art starts fanboying over Santa. Art pulls his beard but Santa scolds him as it’s not a fake beard. He tells him “Santas all have real beards.” In response, Art gives a coy, Charlie Chaplin-esque demure acceptance of this truism.
“What’s in the bag?” asks the bartender. Art then pulls out a bike horn and honks it incessantly. He soon pisses on Santa’s lap and taunts him to fight. Santa is literally pissed on and off.
Art goes nil and shoots the bar tender and Ron Howard’s brother in the head. He almost shoots Santa too, who begs for his life, but instead takes his outfit and wears the Santa suit himself.
Art pulls out the liquid nitrogen and breaks his living frozen face with a chisel hammer and rips his beard off like a wet Band-Aid. He then takes a plastic carrot nose for a snowman and jams it into Santa’s fat broken sticky frozen face. Glorious! Yes!
Siena reads a message from Jonathan that there is a demon in this world and it’s her. Hmm. Okay. Later it’s revealed this applies to Vicky. Weird little segway.
In the mall: Now Santa is unmurdered (not undead), not frozen-smashed-face Santa although they look A LOT alike… Siena and her little niece (I guess) are shopping it up despite her parents worry that Siena might still be really insane. And like that she hears the clown cafe song on the mall’s PA system. No one else reacts. And just then another Santa with a big bag and Santa face mask with bloody hand turns to wave at Siena. Then he carries on into the mall.
Siena is freaked. She meets her brother for lunch, but he refuses a family invitation for a blond/e couple who just want to stooge him and Siena out for a podcast on their true crime experience. Siena throws it back at to them that they aren’t human.
“I need you.” Siena begs of her little brother. “What you need to do is let go.” Jonathan replies. Siena must go back to the Terrifier ride where she killed Art to ensure closure.
Meanwhile, Art is about to slay the bells of some little kids as their inattentive soccer moms pay no attention, at this Santa mall line-up, watching their iPhones. One little girl steps up and Art gives her a nice doll. Mom sees it’s not Santa and finally calls her away from Art. A dozen kids then rush Art the Santa and take all manner of toy out of his red bag. Suddenly a bomb goes off and parts of dead kids are everywhere.
Jonathan goes crazy alone. No party. No family. Meds aren’t working.
Art shows up in a frat party house, beta alpha lambda if my Google Greek serves me, with a new bag of tricks.
The niece confesses she read all of Siena’s diaries about killing Art the Clown.
Art is in dorm watching the blond/e couple get it on. Nice!
Siena’s niece’s father is watching the mass bombing murder at the mall on the news… and Tom Savini makes a cameo as an eyewitness. Cool cameo!
Siena dreams of making love in a shower. Oops, no, it’s just the hot blond/e couple. It’s nice to see those still exist. But, even in the nether regions of nihilistic horror such a couple must get the chainsaw treatment, apparently. Art busts in, cutting the guy’s hand, but he fends Art off a second before getting fingers, and leg cut off. Then cutting her stomach and face to pieces before putting on his flair-Christmas tree sunglasses over her bloody mangled face.
Then pulling off blond guy’s barely dangling leg and shoving that chainsaw right up his rectum, disemboweling him Bone Tomahawk style. Then turns him frontward and chainsaws his cock and balls. Then his head, arms, and finally a bloody snow angels to cap it off. At least he made use of every part of him and didn’t let any of him go to waste, dramatically.
Siena has a nice memory of her dad drawing her as a heroin from Terrifier 2. (That costume still gives me pleasant dreams too!) She touches the painting, and the horrible future is revealed… some blacksmith and mistress sneer and snarl at Siena in her dream. That’s a total bearmask moment ala The Shining. Random!
Siena wakes up… goes downstairs and Vicky is possessed and dressed in Art’s shades of black and white. Art nailed a dead body to the wall. The Uncle-in-law’s maybe? Haven’t seen him in a while.
Art hits Siena with a mallet and throws her through a table. It’s ON… again! But Art mallets her unconscious. Siena wakes up and is tied to a chair, clothes on (regrettably). Her sister from a different mister is also tied up with a severed head in newspaper between them. And it’s not the husband’s head as his is the star at the top of the tree! The guts of the disemboweled body are also hung like tinsel foil around the Christmas tree. Creative!
The head is of her little daughter, the niece, in a bird cage with rats on it, eating the dead flesh! Ghastly implication!
Then Art puts a glass cylinder in the niece’s mother’s mouth and hammers it into her bloody face and shoves rats down her throat then Vicky slits the throat, and the rats come out again. No animal cruelty you see. Nope, spoke too soon. Art stomps the rodents dead under his merciless clown shoe!
Vicky gives Siena her crown of thorns. Art then brings out lil niece who is not dead. Whew! But then a freak-off occurs as Vicky and Seina square off with possession spiritual standoff. Eyes glow, wind blows… it’s super freaky, yeow!
Art and Vicky both threaten the niece with a knife. Art breaks both her hands with a sharp instrument of some sort. Then ask her to open a present and it’s the sword from part 2… an intense sword to chainsaw battle ensues, etcetera.
Jonathan is one of these deaths and was killed off screen?! Whoa, okay…
Terrifier 3 Uppers
I like the continuity of continuing with Lauren LaVera as Siena Shaw. She’s been great so far. I for one loved her in Terrifier 2. Slight crush, sure, but acting was captivating as well. She went for it! Believable warrior! I liked the escalation of Art the Clown’s persona and continuity of performance is terrific. You can’t replace David Howard Thornton as Art the Clown. He’s made the role his own since Terrifier in 2016 after taking over the franchise from the All Hallows Eve version of Art the Clown, played previously by Mike Giannelli. He’s stepping up in that pantheon with Robert Englund and Doug Bradley slowly but surely, for a new generation.
I loved the cameos.
I love that comfortable holiday feeling created by the set decoration and the director which sets the tone so beautifully for the mayhem Art commits. It’s so comfortable and relatable you feel the carnage even more as a result.
Terrifier 3 Downers
More of the same. I like that same. I like it, and there’s nothing else like it in the mainstream, that’s for sure. I support Damien Leone and the Terrifier franchise. But it was like a comfort food. I knew what I was getting, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
I love the crime spree atmosphere of Art. The freedom is exhilarating. But the headless thing was not particularly myth building, nor did we get any deeper into the essence of the maniac. Which is fine, to a degree. Maniacs don’t need depth, exactly. But the one-noteness and novelty of it struck me moreso as it was more pronounced this time around. Still loved it. I want more please, even though the food’s a little funny at the Clown Café.
In summary, I enjoyed Terrifier 3. The Christmas aspect of it didn’t hurt or help the franchise in my opinion. It was a neutral thing. I loved the performances. It was a classic, cliffhanger ending with open potential for future franchise entries. But be careful. We’re on the precipice of redundancy and although I will pay for a ticket to the next installment, I might be too desensitized to appreciate the same old again. It will need to raise the stakes up and increase the novelty factor with some new conceptual angle to really keep it a fresh kill.
Overall, high recommendation.
Directed by: Damien Leone
Written by: Damien Leone
Produced by: Phil Falcone, Steven Della Salla, Jason Leavy, Michael Leavy, Jason Milstein, George Steuber
Cinematography by: George Steuber
Music by: Paul Wiley
Edited by: Matt Provenzano
Special Effects by: Callosum Studios, Tinsley Studio
Cast: Lauren LaVera, David Howard Thornton, Antonella Rose, Elliott Fullam, Samantha Scaffidi
Year: 2024
Country: USA
Language: English
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 2h 5min
Studio: Bloody Disgusting, Dark Age Cinema, Fuzz on the Lens Productions, The Coven
Distributor: Cineverse Entertainment
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