Terrifier 3 Review: A Holiday Slasher!

Damien Leone has shown since 2016 with the first installment in the Terrifier franchise that he is a force for horror that has not been seen in decades. Art the Clown, a horrific and violent (yet comedic) serial killer, made his first feature film debut eight years ago with David Howard Thornton under the mask. On $35,000-$55,000 it made almost a half million dollars.

In 2022 Terrifier 2 became a cult phenomena having been made for $250,000 and making over 15 million at the box office, one of the greatest horror successes from a non-studio film since anyone can remember. Damien Leone’s major success became recognized by the biggest studios in the industry and audiences alike doing, next to, the impossible. Since 2022 the fan base has grown since this little franchise took over our culture, gearing up for the release of Terrifier 3.

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Taking place five years after the events of the second film, Sienna Shaw is just checking out of a treatment center due to the events that took place with Art of the Clown years before. Taken in by her aunt, uncle, and eager cousin Gabbie, Sienna is trying her best to move on, in spite of seeing terrifying visions on a daily basis. She wants to believe she is safe having “killed” Art five years ago. However, from the last scene in Terrifier 2, the audience is aware that Art has found a host in Samantha Scaffidi allowing him to live on and continue to carry out gruesome murders across town. Terrifier 3 gives the audience the same Art the Clown, but this time he’s killing during the most joyous and merriest season of all, Christmas.

Terrifier 3 maintains the differentiating supernatural element that made its predecessor so gripping. The audience is not just given a slasher featuring a demonic clown ripping characters to bits. Instead, Leone continues his allegorical story that takes on good versus evil as it pertains to religion and saviors. Sienna Shaw isn’t just your typical final girl, she has special powers that allow her to be the only person that is strong enough to defeat such a sinister clown.

The film feels like an urban legend in the making, reincarnating the story of the devil versus our savior and how they may be more connected than we assume. In this, Terrifier 3’s script is immensely amplified by Leone in a genre where it would have been just as easy to create a standard slasher with an iconic villain. Instead, Leone shows his intense love and admiration for the characters he has built and places them at the center of a story that defies slasher expectations.

With all that said, Terrifier 3 still knows how to choreograph and create the most gnarly kills that makes the franchise a challenge for the audience to stomach in itself. However, Terrifier has always been a franchise in which the kills prove to be an art form lead by Leone, who does his own special effects makeup along with directing, writing, producing, and editing the feature. Beginning as a special effects makeup artist, Leone has certainly grown in his talents but his love for makeup continues to ring true in Terrifier 3.

In true nature of his previous work, the amount of blood and guts Art manufacturers from his victims has given the film above an R rating, many audience members not being able to handle the visuals. What some may see as just unjustified carnage, Damien Leone has created a competition with himself as to how creative and diabolical he can get with his special effects on such a low Hollywood budget. It is undeniable what Leone has been able to accomplish on screen with so little money but with a boatload of innovation.

Slasher franchises like Halloween and Scream have allowed fan favorite characters to remain in the films’ sequels as Leon has done with Sienna and her brother Elliot. Even in the recurrence of familiar faces, slasher franchises have always struggled to evoke a genuine emotional attachment to its characters because, at the end of the day, it would be more fun to see them as bodies. Sienna Shaw is a final girl above all final girls. Leone has built this love for her as a character that can be easily seen from the outside, thus making the audience feel love for her too.

Watching Sienna in peril under Art sends a shiver down our spines feeling just as protective of Sienna as Leone. Every cut and bruise she gets is a dagger to the audience’s hearts, seeing the true pain she has experienced because of Art and how it has torn apart her life forever. Terrifier 3 never allows the psychological torment of its characters to go unnoticed in a genre where it often falls by the wayside. The film continues Sienna’s story while maintaining what made the Terrifier films so gripping, leaving even more to the story to uncover once the credits roll.

‘Terrifier 3’ Rating – 4/5

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