Terrifier 3 movie review & film summary (2024)

The “Terrifier” franchise has been a fascinating industry story, a series of extremely low-budget and ridiculously gory horror features that prove that not every genre fan wants “elevated horror.” Sometimes, you just want a splatterfest, and Damien Leone undeniably provides that, trying to top his own carnage with each gruesome murder, gleefully loving the fact that people have reportedly puked and/or passed out at screenings. Some aspects of these films are impressive, most notably the wicked makeup effects and an underrated physical performance from David Howard Thornton, but “Terrifier 3” feels like a lateral move at best after the notable improvement in filmmaking from the first to the second chapter. Leone continues to grow as a filmmaker—and there’s something interesting about watching that unfold throughout the franchise. But his screenwriting continues to let him down, jumbling his concepts with shallow mythology, atrocious dialogue, and ridiculous padding, leading to another film in this series that pushes over two hours. I’m still rooting for Leone to figure it out, but it’s not in this one.

The best idea that Leone had in the production of “Terrifier 3” was to set it around Christmas, allowing the filmmaker to play with the iconography of the era, including putting the murderous Art the Clown (Thornton) in a Santa suit for most of his rampage. Leone’s playfulness with holiday scenes and his subversion of religious imagery feel like something that a smarter screenwriter could really use for greater impact. Still, even if it’s just superficial here, it makes for some striking visuals—a chainsaw-wielding, sunglasses-wearing Santa in clown makeup definitely keeps your attention.

“Terrifier 3” picks up after the ridiculous end of the last film, in which the scarred Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi) literally gave birth to the severed head of Art. Don’t ask. One of the things I liked about the second chapter was how it dove into the surreal and supernatural, understanding that this kind of thing plays better like a nightmare than a film in which all the plot points have to connect. So, do we need to understand how Art gets his head reattached to his body? Not really. He just does.

Art and Victoria shack up in an abandoned home while final girl Sienna (Lauren LaVera) tries to deal with the trauma enacted by the last film. She returns from a psychiatric hospital to live with her aunt Jessica (Margaret Ann Florence), her husband Greg (Bryce Johnson), and their kid Gabbie (Antonella Rose), who is clearly in this film just to be put in harm’s way (or maybe “Art’s way”). Sienna’s brother Jonathan (Elliot Fullam) is in college, dealing with his own PTSD, but this, too, is merely an excuse for more victims for Art to skin alive. To say that the plotting in “Terrifier 3” is thin would be an understatement, and yet there’s so much of it. Scene after scene of Sienna talking about her trauma unfolds in a manner that I feel is almost designed to make you desperate to watch another Art the Clown act of cruelty just to alleviate the boredom.

And cruel they are. Much has already been made of the kill scenes in “Terrifier 3” and how blatantly they’re trying to push the boundaries of taste more than even the first two controversial films. They’re so over-the-top ridiculous in their design and execution that I don’t really take them seriously. Still, they wouldn’t argue with anyone offended by a movie that is willing to go where this one does, which is not just to mutilation and torture but across boundary lines that even most horror fans maintain, including the deaths of children.

So why not write off “Terrifier 3” entirely? Two reasons: One, the DIY aspect of the film reminds me of genre flicks I loved when I first discovered the genre and one of the reasons I still love horror—it doesn’t gatekeep like other genres, allowing anyone with the right passion to make a movie like this for reportedly under $2 million, a number it will cross in profit before school is out on Friday. Two, Thornton is legitimately phenomenal, giving what is a very physical performance that’s more reminiscent of silent comedy than modern horror. (And adding Victoria to chatter away reduces the silent killer’s tension in this one. Don’t do that for the fourth film again, Damien.) So, while Leone and his maniacal alter ego still have some work to do, mostly in the writing department, I’m going to keep rooting for “Terrifier” to figure it out. After all, everybody loves a clown.