Art The Clown is back and ready to murder as many as he can brutally, this time during Christmas. As ever, he’s doing it with the smile and personality only he can with such bloodshed and masochistic intentions, and this time a partner-in-crime joins him.
Several years after surviving Art’s brutal attack, Sienna (Lauren LaVera) and her brother Jonathan (Elliott Fullam) are attempting to move on with their lives. The former just got out of a retreat as she tries to live with the nightmares that haunt her, and the latter ditches Death Metal and attempts to be a normal kid at school.
After his defeat at the end of Terrifier 2, Art breaks Victoria Heyes (Samantha Scaffidi) out of a hospital and recruits her to his side. Though she has a brief cameo in Terrifier 2, this addition more correctly bridges the three Terrifier films. Following a brief cacoon-like sleep for the two of them, which lasts the exact number of years as Sienna’s hospital visit, they awaken and are ready to get to work.
Setting a horror film at Christmas isn’t anything odd for the genre, but this is by far the most brutal Christmas horror film I’ve seen — though it’s one of, if not the most brutal horror film I’ve ever watched. Anyone watching Terrifier 3 should know what they’re in for by now. When you watch the film, you expect to see some intense kills. And they live up to the bar set by Terrifier 2, which rose to over $10M at the box office and rode a wave of social media stories about people fainting and throwing up in the cinema. Terrifier 3 continues to find new and creative ways for Art to kill, from using a chair to liquid nitrogen or the simplicity of a pistol. However, he’s doing it; Art is having fun with it. It’s going to be the prolonged brutality of the opening scene, which sees Art invading my home fully dressed as Santa, or a squeem-inducing torture scene in the film’s later half that’ll truly test fans.
Sienna is once again brought to life with a stern and powerful Lauren LaVera. Though her character only progresses a little in this film, plenty remains to be wrapped up in the fourth and potentially final Terrifier film. Unlike Terrifier 2, which more-or-less injected a strong heroine into the lead to be Arts folie, Terrifier 3 is more interested in expanding Art’s lore and giving him something of one last hoo-ra in a more typical slasher film. If anything, it seems like Terrifier 4 would be exploring more of the fantastical backstory and lore for Art vs Sienna that’s been building for these past two films: angels, demons, prophecies, big swords and all.
Watching Terrifier 3 with a packed crowd cemented why these films do so well and why I have gravitated to Art as a villain like many other horror fans. It’s not just that he delivers the kills in ways that only true sickos can appreciate; it’s that he does it in a way that’s unabashedly fun and meant to be laughed at. How Damien Leone has the audience going from full-blown laughter while Art gets into an argument with a security guard while he’s pretending to be Santa to him shrugging off compliments as he secretly listens to himself being compared to famous serial killers, and then you’ll see those same people who were laughing-loudly sinking into their chairs, closing an eye, or just yelling out “oh god, no” is an art form in itself.
As was the case with Terrifier 2, this film does get bogged down in the middle, and the runtime seems a little overstuffed. You have to be into all of what Terrifier 3 offers in terms of character, story, and kills to appreciate the larger-than-life narrative that Leone is piecing together here. This may leave some viewers, wishing to get to the subsequent kills, disappointed.
