Art the Clown kills Christmas in Terrifier 3, his best outing yet

The Terrifier films are largely known as niche exercises in a very particular kind of horror overkill—writer/director Damien Leone’s odes to practical gore effects and stomach-churning kill scenes. Even when Terrifier 2 broke through at the box office in the fall of 2022, the emphasis was primarily on audience members who were fainting and vomiting in the aisles, eyes wide in disbelief at just how far Leone and his villain, David Howard Thornton’s Art the Clown, were willing to push the action.

But as the franchise has matured, so too has Leone as a filmmaker. The Terrifier sequels, while never letting up on the blood and guts, are also exercises in balancing humanity against Art’s inhumanity, setting up thinking, feeling, relatable characters as counterweights to the monster at the core of the series. If Terrifier was a gorefest frustratingly short on emotion, then Terrifier 2 was an overstuffed epic that leaned a little too hard into its human characters, drifting a bit as it tries to find the right balance. With Terrifier 3, balance has struck. These films still aren’t for everyone, and Art is still gleefully painting the walls with intestines and severed limbs, but the latest film in Leone’s slasher opus is the best of the bunch so far, thanks to strong performances and some truly harrowing moments.

It’s been five years since the massacre that made up the bulk of Terrifier 2, and though his body is nowhere to be found, Art the Clown seems to have vanished from the world. The girl who slayed him, Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera), is in and out of treatment facilities while dealing with PTSD and survivor’s guilt, but she’s finally found a measure of peace that means she can spend the Christmas holidays back home with her family.

Meanwhile, a chance encounter has led to a resurgence for Art, who re-emerges from a kind of hibernation and begins killing again, picking his way across town on the hunt for Sienna and her younger brother, Jonathan (Elliott Fullam). Along the way, he picks up an old sidekick, dons a Santa suit, and generally aims for maximum mayhem, all while setting the stage for a confrontation for the ages. That’s right y’all, Terrifier 3 is a Christmas horror movie, and all the lights and decorations offer a wonderful juxtaposition with Art’s favorite color: Blood red.

Terrifier fans, especially Terrifier fans who have stuck around for a third (four if you count All Hallow’s Eve) movie, are here for the gore, and Leone does not disappoint. Art has found all manner of new ways to kill people, from improvised weapons to new contraptions that he’s designed himself—like a liquid nitrogen gun that works great when paired with a hammer—with the goal of inflicting maximum pain. But what makes the gore stand out is not just how extreme it is, but how much variance Leone is able to provide both in choreography and in thematic weight. Every kill Art deploys—including one with rats that’ll burn itself into your eyeballs—feels like something new, but also pushes the character in a way that makes it feel like he’s actually growing with his taste for violence. That’s saying something for a clown that doesn’t talk. Art can, of course, still clown around and stage blackly comic tableaus with his human playthings, including a particularly squirm-worthy encounter with a Santa performer, but he can also become a savage instrument of pure terror, as he does in one particular kill late in this film. It’s easy to think of Art as a magical dispenser of dirty tricks, but he’s also a monster without an ounce of quit in him, and when he shifts into that gear, your jaw will be on the floor.

There’s something else at work here with Art the Clown, both in the way Leone’s script portrays him and in the way Thornton embodies the role with wide eyes and a rictus grin. There’s clearly something supernatural behind Art’s killing spree, and while Terrifier 3 is interested in exploring that more, branching out its lore in clever asides that never detract from the main story, it’s also interested in exploring how Art works from kill to kill, weapon to weapon. There’s a mind behind these murders, and Terrifier 3 is out to probe it.

One of the great mysteries of wordless slasher villains is what they’re thinking while they go about their business. With Art, there’s less mystery because we can see his grease-painted face. What those eyes, that grin, those exaggerated gestures convey is someone (or something) who loves being a slasher. He’s a fan, not just of the genre he works in but the media he uses, whether he’s picking up a chainsaw or a carving knife. There’s glee in his eyes as he plays with the conventions of his own genre, from the pacing of a slasher kill to the audience’s expectations for over-the-top gore, piecing together works of gruesome art like a deranged Jackson Pollock—moving through pure feel, playing jazz with human viscera. That’s always been an element of this character, but Terrifier 3 elevates this to another level as the story leans more toward what Art is, why he is, and what the humans around him can do about it.

Which brings us to LaVera, who cements herself as one of horror’s brightest new stars with her second time out as Sienna Shaw. Her character’s arc placed her in very clear danger of simply being a traumatized survivor, who can’t find any joy in life because of what’s happened to her, something far too many horror films have done to talented actors. With LaVera, though, there’s a warmth that can’t be denied, particularly when she’s working to reconnect with her young cousin Gabbie (Antonella Rose) and move on with her life. It doesn’t necessarily work, because Art’s not giving up that easy, but LaVera finds the human heart of Sienna in a new home, and a new mental health struggle that rocks her back on her heels, and when the horror kicks in for her character, she’s able to dial right back into Final Girl mode. It’s a remarkable performance, and it makes Terrifier 3‘s final act the most harrowing of the franchise so far.

Like its predecessors, Terrifier 3 is a relentless, gleeful gauntlet of practical effects and gore that’ll make you gag in your seat, and like its predecessors it sometimes gets a little too self-referential and indulgent for its own good. In the end, though, that all gets swept away by the sheer scope of this slasher. It’s an ambitious story (setting up still more adventures for Art the Clown), a solid character drama, and proof that Leone has gotten even better at balancing out the needs of his characters with his audience’s craving for ultraviolence. It’s the best Terrifier yet, just in time to make your Christmas bloodier.

Director: Damien Leone
Writer: Damien Leone
Starring: Lauren LaVera, Elliott Fullam, David Howard Thornton, Samantha Scaffidi
Release Date: October 11, 2024