Terrifier 3 ★★

Released: 11th October 2024

Director: Damien Leone

Starring: David Howard Thornton, Lauren LaVera, Elliot Fullam, Samantha Scaffidi

Writer, director and editor Damien Leone returns, in collaboration with David Howard Thornton as the infamous Art the Clown, who is now boasting cult status, for what is unfortunately the most tedious and cruel entry into the Terrifier franchise. Who would’ve thought that the Terrifier series would lose its identity and become truly hack material? As a fervent and passionate supporter of Leone and Howard Thornton’s previous audiovisual endeavours, it truly cuts me in half to say Terrifier 3 is easily the worst piece of work the duo have worked on.

From the two original micro budgets of $35,000 for Terrifier and $250,000 for Terrifier 2, to a reported three-and-a-half million dollar budget for Terrifier 3, this Yuletide edition has lost all of its unique authenticity and vile tactility in the rapture of a serious budget. What’s even more horrific is that for at least the first third of the film there are both some fabulous ideas being batted around, as well as some remarkable imagery and formalism on display.

From the jump, its gorgeous 35mm presentation and cinematography, suitably fit the Christmastime aesthetic. The Terrifier franchise has always had a wonderful texture and balance in its visual presentation, with Leone’s editing constantly stitching the narrative together. This, now, third instalment follows on from Terrifier 2, in which Sienna — played remarkably well by Lauren LaVera — and her younger brother Jonathan — Elliot Fullam — attempt to rebuild their lives after the events of the Halloween Massacre. This utterly depraved and violent altercation with Art the Clown has left them both battered and bruised on both the outside and inside.

Sienna, who usurps Howard Thornton in terms of performance in Terrifier 3, is physically and psychologically traumatised from these events, so much so that she has been spending her time in an institution to support her navigation of these traumas. Terrifier 3 does a beautiful job of discussing “scars” and how their negative connotations take away from the power of what they represent. The film presents such scars as a force to be reckoned with, a superpower if you will, and it is this hypothesis that gleams through all of the violent schlock.

Terrifier 3’s major downfall? The obsession with constantly becoming increasingly depraved and violent. It quite simply destroys all sense of emotional build-up or response, when Art comes storming in once again with yet another nasty trick in his Santa Clausian bag of wonders. This infatuation with endless cruelty has inadvertently brought the Terrifier franchise to a grinding halt. Leone is clearly a craftsman, particularly in the realm of practical effects, and under the right guise Thornton can unleash these remarkable, haunting performances. Both of his masterful Keatonesque mime performances in the
previous two films have been upended by incessant cruelty. Sure, there’s a place in the cinematic arena for these insidious sequences, but with Terrifier 3 there is categorically no meaning to it all. Furthermore, it has gotten to the point where there is quite literally nothing at stake. Art just seems to inflict horror, and in return nothing seems to even blemish him. There is this sense of invincibility to Art that works in the first film, just about clears Terrifier 2, but by Terrifier 3 this notion is honestly insufferable.

Terrifier 3 has taken the series to a space of tedium, and worst of all Terrifier 3 is utterly oppressive for the majority of its two-hour runtime. From the playful, twisted and endearing first and second entries, Terrifier 3 has become everything it set out not to be – monotonous and soulless. Aside from some lovely writing on trauma, a few excellent formal glimpses and a foundation of clear craftsmanship, it destroys me to say that Terrifier 3 is nothing more than awful.