Terrifier 3

Damien Leone's latest entry continues a worrying escalation of violence

The Terrifier movies have been a fairytale for independent filmmaking; a ragtag crew starts a franchise using creativity, grit, and scant budgets. The surprising franchise has delivered a third entry with Terrifier 3 (2024).

Terrifier 3 follows the hero of the last film, Sienna (Lauren LaVera) who, five years after surviving the murderous clown Art (David Howard Thornton) in the previous film, is still reeling from the trauma. Just before Christmas, she moves in with her aunt Jessica (Margaret Anne Florence) and uncle Greg (Bryce Johnson), and reconnects with her nosy tween cousin Gabbie (Antonella Rose). However, the supernatural Art and his mangled devotee Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi) are back to their murderous spree.

Despite the low budgets featured in the franchise, Terrifier has consistently had top-notch acting from its performers. Howard Thornton has an iconic take on his villain, imbuing him with a macabre glee and mime gestures. LaVera is a convincing foil that sells the more dramatic moments when special effects are over the top.

Director Damien Leone, who made a career as a special FX and make-up artist, has kept his budgets low and gore high thanks to his expertise. His growth as a director is apparent, with an increasing patience at developing characters and building tension. However, the Terrifier films have never worried about these elements, the main draw has been effects and violence. As such, meager attempts at building a mythology to Art’s is easily discarded by viewers and filmmakers alike. Leone has also chosen to lean further into the dark comedy elements of the franchise, which initially were ad libs from the first film. This adds both to the uniqueness of the franchise, but also problematically pairs with certain violent scenes.

There is violence and then there is Terrifier’s violence, which puts other slashers to shame and dangerously approaches to snuff films. Each subsequent entry in this franchise has upped the ante to worrying degrees. Terrifier (2016) featured a gruesome sawing in half of a naked woman, Terrifier 2 (2022) featured another teenage girl getting skinned and salted. Terrifier 3 crosses multiple lines, most notably killing children. This follows the worrying pattern of how most of the elaborate and mangled killings occur to scantily clothed women.

Leone has claimed that there he is not a misogynist since “he was raised by women,” but that claim is irrelevant when someone continues promoting a specific imagery and pattern of explicit violence against women on film. The imagery is hard to ignore, especially when female characters are heavily sexualized while they are being dismembered. Claims that this is typical of the slasher genre clash against the relish with which the torture and hacking is carried out in Terrifier 3, this isn’t just Michael Meyers stabbing a naked woman, but rather a 10 minute sequence of a college girl getting visible hacked and torn apart by a chainsaw without the camera cutting away. Men meanwhile are normally limited to decapitations. Meanwhile, having Art impersonate Santa Claus only to have gifts he handed out explode in kids’ hands and showing their dismembered bodies, is a step too far in the provocativeness that Leone claims he is aiming for.

Most of Terrifier 3 is intent with shocking the audience and daring them to call the film extreme, but in doing so it forgets to perform the basic duties of carrying a story forward and paying off build up. Two prominent characters are killed off screen for the finale, and only mentioned in a throw-away moment, whereas there is an inconsequential extended scene of Art at a bar with a fake Santa whom he then tortures. Even the most basic of slashers need to have the bones of a comprehensive plot, yet Terrifier 3 has devolved into focusing on its imagery in lieu of everything else.

In the end, Terrifier 3 is a further escalation in the violence, gore, and rule-breaking of Leone’s franchise. There are great elements of cinematography, sound, make-up, and performances in the film, unfortunately, the thirst for exposing viewers to gruesome images, particularly inflicted on women and children, makes this film become repugnant in the way the filmmakers did not intend.  

3.9/10