For someone who doesn’t particularly like horror, I would say “Terrifier 3” is tolerable. If you go in knowing it’s fak,e and that they have amazing special effects, you’ll be pretty impressed at the amount of gore in this film. I was pretty surprised that while they leaned heavily into the gore, it wasn’t as stomach churning as some have been saying online. My friend and I were looking out in the audience to make sure no one threw up, at least in our direction. In fact it wasn’t until after the movie that we did see someone throw up but it was a kid in a trash can and probably unrelated.
While I enjoyed it, the title of this article came from when I spoke with a woman in her late 70s who had just seen the film. I was curious, because I saw quite a few older folks coming into the theater, and no one left during the movie. Curiosity got the best of me, I asked her if she liked it. She said, “Not really, too much blood.”
This won’t be spoiler free. So if you want the stats, they’ll be at the end. Like Joe Bob Briggs, I like to tally up the kills and such. So lets start with the beginning of the movie, where people were apparently puking because it was so violent. The movie starts out with a little girl telling her mom someone was on the roof, and the dad being a douche and being grumpy to his wife because he “has to be up in 3 hours,” get over yourself buddy. Anyway it ends with a Christmas themed massacre where we see Art chop up the dad (good he was rude), we see the mother discover her son’s body which has been dismembered but that part was not shown on screen which was a relief because I don’t do well with child death on screen. And the mom meets her end with numerous chops of an axe. We see Art finish off the cookies that were left out for Santa’s Elves because this takes place before Christmas, and the little girl was concerned so the mom had left out cookies and milk. Then Art, being the considerate fellow he is cleans up the dish and puts it neatly in the dishrack. He finds the little girl hiding but it’s not revealed if she lives or dies, it just segways to the hatchet on the table and it ends the scene.
That was the first ten minutes or so, the rest kind of blends together in my mind. Sienna gets picked up from the mental hospital by her uncle and goes to stay at her cousin Gabbie’s house for Christmas. She’s still struggling from the aftermath of what happened in “Terrifier 2″. Her brother is in college and trying to move past things. Sienna is seeing things, images of her friend who passed away who’s negging her on because she failed to kill Art previously. She’s trying her best to keep things together and I think that the acting on Lauren LaVera’s part was very good. It wasn’t overly chaotic and I really bought her performance. Everyone in this film truly felt like they were in that world. It at no point felt fake which is something that I think a lot of horror films struggle with.
Art the Clown’s performance, David Howard Thornton, was probably one of the funniest parts of this movie. You can tell that he really enjoyed filming parts of it. Because at the heart of this I feel like his character is just a funny little guy. Yeah he is a serial killer who’s brutally murdered lots of people but he’s also very childlike and in a way, kind of innocent. It’s weird to type that out but his aura is just kind of… idk. I think Childlike is the best word here. He gets so excited to meet Santa Claus at a bar that you can kind of see the giddiness in his facial expressions. And it’s not until he gets offended that he ends up turning the bar into a full on massacre.
The worst scene in this or the ones that were the most brutal as far as killing goes was definitely the shower scene at the college. There a boyfriend and girlfriend were being intimate in the shower and Art chainsaws them up. But that’s not the worst part. That’s probably when we see Art chainsaw the boyfriend from the butt crack up where we see his testicles and the rest of it being sawed to the side. I kind of laughed at the absurdity of it. I wonder if it was to make things even since Art sawed that woman in half starting from the vulva and working his way down to her cranium. At least that way the brutal deaths between men and women feel about even? Maybe?
There is one scene where Art is at the mall and there are multiple child deaths. But in this instance they don’t show it, only some of the aftermath. Or well, it’s more of a BOOM and then some fire footage and later a news story that Sienna ends up hearing and freaking out over. Because she did see him at the mall and didn’t imagine it.
The final act where Victoria’s entity is featured a bit more was probably the best part, for me at least. The demon speaking through Victoria was the perfect addition to that scene. I think if they had just had Art and Sienna it would have felt a bit empty, but the demon’s personality was interesting and hearing it was just enough to keep me intrigued. She’s actually featured a lot in this film, though her parts were a bit hard to swallow. There are two scenes in particular that I’m talking about here, a bathtub self harm scene, and an exorcist style masturbation scene done with glass from a broken mirror.
The ending is pretty open and there is room to make another “Terrifier” movie. With Sienna and Art the Clown still alive, and a motive for Sienna to move forward I expect many will go to watch another film. I was honestly a little disappointed that the lore I wanted answered didn’t get answered. In the second movie it shows a picture of Art the Clown that Sienna’s father had drawn and I wanted to know how he knew about him. Obviously there’s more to that but all we got was a flashback fever dream where her dad gives her the picture of the character he created for her, which was the basis for her outfit in the last film. No mention of why he drew the picture. No closure for that.
So final notes on the film… I think if you’re going to see it, see it in a theater. The crowd will be worth the trip. It’s going to be a fun Christmas film for a lot of people. Heck, they even put in an Art the Clown Christmas song which I’m sure is going to be played a lot by the fans. And I’m almost certain that Art is going to stick around the pop culture buzz for a while. Because a lot of people do see him as just a silly little guy.
What to Watch For, or Cover Your Eyes For:
Deaths: 23 – Family in the beginning 3, cop investigating the scene when Arts body is still on the ground from “Terrifier 2” 1, psychiatric hospital 2, Cosplayer on bus 1, Bar scene 3, People surveying the creepy house 2, Kids and parents at the mall 5, Podcaster and boyfriend 2, Sienna’s family 3, possibly the entity that was inside Victoria 1.
Animal Deaths: 1 rat via freezing nitrogen, possibly 2 rats from entering the Aunt’s corpse through a tube.
Types of Kills: Freeze Gun, Hatchet, Chainsaw, Hammer, Glass, Physically ripping off someone’s head, a bomb and impaling someone with a plastic tube, decapitation and installation of head on Christmas Tree.
You can catch “Terrifier 3” in theaters now.
