Movie Review: TERRIFIER 3 – Assignment X

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: October 10th, 2024 / 10:09 PM

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Lauren LaVera, David Howard Thornton, Elliott Fullam, Sarah Voigt, Samantha Scaffidi, Chris Jericho, Antonella Rose, Margaret Anne Florence, Bryce Johnson, Alexa Blair, Mason Mecartea, Krsy Fox, Clint Howard, Jon Abrahams, Daniel Roebuck, Jason Patric
Writer: Damien Leone
Director: Damien Leone
Distributor: Cineverse
Release Date: October 11, 2024

TERRIFIER 3 provides two-for-one holiday horror. Arriving just in time for Halloween, it’s actually set during Christmas.

Like its predecessors, 2016’s TERRIFIER and 2022’s TERRIFIER 2, TERRIFIER 3 is written and directed by Damien Leone. Actor David Howard Thornton is likewise back for his third round as Art the Clown, a sadistic, silent killer who loves slapstick (and slapping his knee, and sticking people with sharp objects).

TERRIFIER 3 has an opener set a few days before Christmas, when a little girl wakes up her parents at 3 AM because she hears someone on the roof. Spoiler: it’s not Santa.

We then flash back to five years earlier (although TERRIFIER 2 was released in 2022, in movie time, TERRIFIER 3’s present is half a decade later than that film).

Art and Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi), a woman who survived having her face torn off only to wind up giving birth to her attacker’s severed head (you read that correctly), find an abandoned house. Victoria slits her wrists in the bathtub.

In the present, a couple of demolition workers arrive at the ostensibly empty residence and accidentally wake up both its actual occupants.

Meanwhile, Sienna (Lauren LaVera), who triumphed over Art in TERRIFIER 2 by decapitating him, is being discharged from her most recent stay at a psychiatric facility.

Sienna is warmly welcomed into the home of her aunt Jessica (Margaret Anne Florence), uncle Greg (Bryce Johnson), and their young daughter Gabbie (Antonella Rose), who worships her older cousin.

But Sienna is still tormented by visions of dead friends and relatives, to the point where she sometimes can’t function.

Sienna’s younger brother Jonathan (Elliott Fullam) had his own awful experiences during TERRIFIER 2, but he’s suppressed them well enough to be able to attend college. Jonathan’s bro roommate Cole (Mason Mecartea) is dating podcaster Mia (Alexa Blair), who is obsessed with “the Miles County Massacre.”

We get more narrative, character, and mythology in TERRIFIER 3 than we had previously. A fair chunk of the finale of TERRIFIER 2 is clarified (although it seems like we’re never going to get an explanation of the dunk tank in Hell).

If the notions aren’t exactly new, they don’t need to be. The selling point here is the contrast between Art’s wackiness and his mind-blowing cruelty, along with Leone’s penchant for brightly-colored settings and production design that add an almost fairytale dimension to the action.

We get a bit of character development, including a scene with Daniel Roebuck as a professional Santa who momentarily tries to befriend Art. The sequence goes from amusing to poignant to appalling.

Leone also allows us to get a little more insight into the workings of the demonic rules here, as the possessed Victoria can speak. She’s disturbing-looking enough that the exposition she provides – along with vicious mockery – mostly works.

While TERRIFIER 3 is closer rhythm and structure to a more conventional slasher than its predecessors, prospective viewers should be aware that the gruesome ethos is the same. There is no rape, but there is onscreen mutilation of every body part belonging to either gender. The special effects makeup by Christien Tinsley and Tinsley Studio is as extreme as it can be.

The violence and sheer brutality here is for people who aren’t inherently bothered by movies like, for example, SAW and HOSTEL. Those were rated R; the TERRIFIER films are all unrated, as it’s hard to imagine them getting anything other than an NC-17.

Between them, Leone and Thornton are doing something unique here. It absolutely is not for everyone, but there is (pardon the pun) real art to it. Thornton brings forth not only the terrifying but also the authentically clownish aspects of Art.

TERRIFIER 3 does pretty much exactly what it sets out to do, as well as laying the groundwork for TERRIFIER 4.

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