If you haven’t found yourself a fan of either of the previous two Terrifier films, there’s a better-than-average chance that the excessive amount of killing, blood-letting, screaming, and child endangerment that populates Terrifier 3 will not be your cup of tea either.
So stay home and shut up about it.
Still written and directed by series creator Damien Leone, this new chapter jumps ahead five years after the previous entry. The final surviving girl from the last film, Sienna (Lavern Lavera), is finally being let out of the psychiatric hospital where she’s been recovering from her mental and physical trauma suffered at the hands of Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton), returning to the town of Miles Country to stay with her Aunt Jessica (Margaret Anne Florence), Uncle Greg (Bryce Johnson), and young cousin Gabbie (Antonella Rose), with the Christmas holidays right around the corner.
We also learn in early scenes that even though Sienna cut Art’s head off at the end of the last film, he has way of dealing with even that level of injury, and we see how his new mangled helper Victoria Heyes (the sole survivor of the first Terrifier, played by Samantha Scaffidi) joins forces to track down Sienna and her friends and family. That includes her returning brother Jonathan (Elliott Fullam), who is away at college but planning to return to spend the holidays with family.
As you may have deduced, there’s a lot going on in this chapter, and most of it is pretty pointless and boring and essentially filler between the blood and copious amounts of guts. My biggest overall complaint about Terrifier 3 is how little is happening when no one is dying. We get cliche Christmas scenes, Jonathan’s college roommates and his girlfriend (who happens to have a true-crime podcast and is obsessed with Art’s murders) grilling the poor kid for details about his experiences with Art and how to get his sister on the podcast.
If three storylines weren’t enough, this movie also features ridiculous flashbacks with Jason Patric as Sienna’s long-lost father talking to her as a child about making herself a warrior (with the help of a costume he designed for a comic book he was drawing). If you saw the last film, you know the costume in question, and it actually added to the Terrifier mythology in a way I wasn’t expecting. Filmmaker Leone continues to give us tidbits about Art and his history and goals (beyond never dying). But the more we get to know Art, the less we really learn about him. He doesn’t kill everyone he comes into contact with, and if you appeal to his sense of following the rules at Christmas, you may get out unscathed. Or not—however you slice it, Art’s rationale and the entire Terrifier mythos seem random and unformed.
So how does the violence stack up? There are a couple of scenes in Terrifier 3 so shocking, so uncompromisingly grotesque, that there’s no doubt in my mind some people will walk out of screenings, even some who could stomach the first two films. Unlike the rest of the otherwise artless film, the craftsmanship and detail committed to the gory violence here is astonishing, and it’s going to bother some people, which is understandable. But if you acknowledge that special effects makeup requires a craftsman’s skills, you’ll appreciate the artistry even as you’re holding back retching at the sight of bodies getting torn to pieces. If only the filmmakers had taken a fraction of the time to flesh out their character and a story into more than just people going from place to place and being pursued by a creative maniac.
I think I still like Terrifier 2 just a little bit more, but the kills in this installment are all-timers in some cases. You know your tastes and your limits; if you go to Terrifier 3 knowing you’re going to hate it, shut up about it. At least have the decency to hate it on its own terms.
The film opens in theaters October 11, preceded by the Chicago premiere at the Music Box Theatre on Monday, Oct. 7 at 9:15pm.
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