Warning! This Terrifier 3 review contains spoilers. Proceed at your own peril!
All sequels face a battle on two fronts.
The first is one all films face: to entertain, engage, and enthrall their audience.
The second – an issue unique to films slotting into an existing franchise – is one best expressed by a question: how do I build on my predecessor’s lore, stave off the law of diminishing returns, and simultaneously give audiences something they love – while also giving them something new enough to make it worth the price of admission?
The Dark Knight (2008), spearheaded by Heath Ledger’s star turn as Joker, introduced deeper character development and more complex character development. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) brought a darker, more mature tone to the series, introducing more complex storytelling techniques such as non-linear narratives. And Toy Story 3 (2010) brought a poignant and emotionally resonant conclusion to the trilogy: tackling themes of growing up, letting go, and the passage of time with maturity and depth.
This is, of course, an issue Terrifier 3 faces – and surmounts – with a similar technique, although it’s not through being bigger (it shaves a clean 15 minutes off it’s predecessor’s runtime) or, necessarily, better than 2022's Terrifier 2.
Instead, Terrifier 3 does what Damien Leone’s Terrifier series has always done: up the ante by giving Art the Clown more hideous, more horrifying – indeed, some of the most gruesome and unendurable committed to film – kill scenes than ever before.
At one point, the sadistic clown dismembers a pair of young lovers in the shower with a chainsaw. At another, he wields a fire extinguisher – modified to discharge liquid nitrogen – against a kindly old grandfather dressed in a Santa suit, before proceeding to smash his frozen body to bits. (The man is still alive at the time.) In one particularly harrowing scene – the opener, in fact – Art butchers a family, including a child (albeit, and thankfully, off-screen). And in perhaps the most depraved act of mercilessness the Terrifier series has given us so far, the clown – posing as a mall Santa – sets off a bomb, disguised as a present, which kills and maims several children and their families. Close-ups of the devastation – including prostrated, blood-soaked victims with their faces and various other appendages ripped off – leave us in no doubt as to the devastation, lingering on the viscera and violence.
If you thought the Terrifier series was getting soft in its old age, well...you were wrong.
In Terrifier 3, Art kills, like always, without seemingly any motivation other than to inflict maximum harm, suffering, and pain upon his innocent victims – but this time, he has an accomplice. That would be franchise mainstay Victoria "Vicky" Heyes (Samantha Scaffidi), the only survivor of Art’s rampage in the first film, Terrifier (2016), who ended up disfigured, institutionalised, and later, it’s revealed, possessed by the demonic clown.
Victoria Heyes (Samantha Scaffidi) in Terrifier 3.
It's Vicky we see, at the end of Terrifier 2 and – following the cold open here, where Art butchers that unknown family – at the start of Terrifier 3, which picks up where the previous film left off, aiding Art’s respawn after his decapitation by Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera). I’m not a big fan of the seemingly invincible villain in horror films – it robs the film of stakes and cheapens the action – but at least Leone and co. dive into the specific schematics, here, giving us a passable (at least in the lore that makes sense for the franchise) explanation as to how Art was able to resume his killing spree.
We also get a fun bit of over-acting from Chris Jericho here, who plays an ill-fated orderly at the mental hospital where Vicky is housed. I was never a fan of WWE, but I’ve seen him in a few horror documentaries (such as the incredibly good In Search of Darkness films) and it’s obvious how passionate and enthusiastic he is about the genre. It’s also fun to watch how the former wrestler turns every minor action – from checking the time to making a coffee – into an extravagant piece of didactic theatre. I only wish we got him for longer!
"Wipe your ass and get down here!"
Returning, briefly, to some of the tried-and-tested tactics (or, viewed less favourably, tropes) sequels employ to build on their predecessors, Terrifier 3 indulges in two.
The first is changing up the setting – while Terrifier 2 took place during Halloween, Terrifier 3 takes on Christmas – and the time, with a five-year time jump fast-forwarding us to the story of the Shaw siblings Sienna and Jonathan (Elliott Fullam), who are still struggling to overcome the events of half a decade earlier. Sienna’s life, in particular, has changed: while Jonathan is at college, attempting to leave the past behind, she’s in a mental health centre, seeing visions of her butchered best friend Brooke (Kailey Hyman) and hearing the faint melody of the Clown Cafe, the site of a massacre she witnessed in a dream in Terrifier 2.
Echoes of past trauma…or grim harbingers of what’s to come?
We soon find out, as Art and Vicky begin doing what they do: killing, indiscriminately, and in the most brutal and unwatchable of ways. As in all good sequels, the addition of Vicky as Art’s accomplice adds an extra dynamic absent for most of the two films prior. While Art adopts a more ordered, calculated approach this time around – building bombs and re-appropriating objects of safety into instruments of murder – she sits in the dungeon they share, cackling maniacally and engages in seemingly random, appalling acts of self-harm. She adds an element of chaos; of savage, unpredictable irrepressibility that counterpoints cleverly with Art’s more methodical mannerisms.
While the pair gather their strength, Sienna heads to the home of her uncle Greg (Bryce Johnson) and aunt Jess (Margaret Ann Florence) for Christmas, a home they share with their daughter Gabbie (Antonella Rose). From here, the unfolding action is apportioned nicely in a three-way split between their home, Jonathan’s dorm, and the world of Vicky and Art. We also meet Jonathan’s roommate Cole (Mason Mecartea) and his girlfriend Mia (Alexa Blair Robertson), the latter of whom is desperate to get Jonathan to appear on her true-crime podcast. From here, the stories intermingle and interweave, ratcheting up the bloodshed to Braindead (1992) levels with more innovative, inventive, and inconceivably intense kill scenes that, while sick and slick in equal measure, won't be for everyone.
David Howard Thornton returns as Art the Clown in the polarising Terrifier 3.
Is Terrifier 3 a Good Movie?
So with all that said and summarised, the question remains: is Terrifier 3 any good?
Well, yeah, it is – with the strong caveat of if you like this kind of stuff.
I’ve been into horror films since before I turned 10 and I’ve seen a lot of them, but this is the genre at its most extreme. Terrifier 3 doesn’t pull its punches, and – unlike Terrifier 2, the denouement of which at least offered a bit of room for optimism – it’s not like we even get a happy or hopeful ending. The camera doesn’t shy away in each scene of torture or disembowelment, either, flipping what feels endlessly back and forth between closeups of the victims and Art’s gleeful, gore-spattered face as he revels in the carnage.
If you like that kind of thing, you probably won’t see a finer example of it than what’s on show here in Terrifier 3.
As you may have guessed, though, it’s not necessarily my kind of thing, and that’s only compounded by the fact that I’m not the biggest fan of
a) long films
b) movies about clowns, and
c) films that bathe in violence to excess, particularly when it’s done so indulgently and gratuitously.
Still, there is a central skein of Terrifier 3 – perhaps it’s the film’s flirtation with gallows comedy, or its passable exploration of family dynamics – that save it from plunging entirely into the abyss of nihilism.
My main gripe would be that there was room to make more of those little chinks of love and light that come through: whether that’s Sienna and Gabbie’s relationship – which is the emotional axis of the film when it’s not chopping its cast up – or the dude-bro Cole’s obvious brotherly affection for his roommate Jonathan. So much of the film’s runtime (I didn’t count, but it felt like a lot) was chewed up by Terrifier 3’s protracted scenes of murder and mutilation. I couldn’t help but feel like, by sacrificing a few minutes of face-ripping or ass-carving, the film could’ve carried such an extra weight of resonance and richness.
But oh well.
The sisterly relationship between Sienna (Lauren LaVera) and her cousin Gabbie (Antonella Rose) is the emotional heartbeat at the centre of Terrifier 3.
Another bugbear for me was that Art kind of seems like the only character with any development here vis a vis Terrifier 2. The vile clown is more playful, more sardonic, more apt to frolic than frown than in previous iterations; by contrast, we learn little about the Shaw siblings than we already knew from the prior film, and neither has a narrative arc that gives them any more to do than they did in Terrifier 2’s bombastic, brilliant second half.
Staying on Art for a moment, it’s worth noting that, while the first Terrifier film merely flirted with any supernatural notions underlying Art’s existence, the second movie leant in fully: establishing Art as a demon, rather than a straight-up murderer with a few screws loose. The third film – while it still stops short of any proper explanation of the paranormal forces propelling Art – again hints at them. But Leone is happy to allude, rather than dictate; and anyways, Terrifier 3 is at its best when it’s eviscerating, rather than explaining.
Terrifier 3 gives us a bit more backstory as to Art the Clown's origins, but not loads of it.
Aesthetically, Terrifier 3 is more well-heeled and visually polished than Terrifier (2016), and is a world away from the grainy, grisly aesthetics of All Hallows’ Eve (2013) or 2008’s The 9th Circle, where Art the Clown made his first appearance. It’s not as daubed in the nostalgic blue-and-red lighting of Terrifier 2, nor as evocative of Stranger Things – but there’s something about the festive setting that works. Whether that’s Art decorating a Christmas tree with human entrails or stalking up the stairs of a family’s home, dressed as Santa, with an axe, Leone revels in juxtaposing the prosocial values of Christmas with Art’s depraved, psychopathic, and nihilistic mentality. Leone draws heavily from films like Silent Night, Deadly Night and the …And All Through the House segment of 1972 Amicus anthology Tales From the Crypt, and – though the shower scene is infinitely gorier than anything Hitchcock ever shot – it wears its 1960 influence on its sleeve.
Terrifier 3 also sees Damien Leone – who made this on a budget of $2 million and saw it rake in almost $90 million in box office stubs – revelling, Art-like, in Terrifier’s now-cemented status as fully-fledged franchise. “It’s a Terrifier Christmas” plays non-diegetically as Art, post-murder, makes snow angels in a pool of blood congealing on the bathroom floor. But if films like Scream (1996) break the fourth wall with a sly wink and subtle, self-referential wink to the audience, Terrifier 3 bashes that door in with a bloody hammer – laughing loudly and maniacally as it does so.
Ultimately, while I can’t imagine Terrifier 3 being a holiday staple on the level of Love Actually (2003) or Die Hard (1988) – the franchise’s third film certainly offers enough to please endurance horror’s most staunchest enthusiasts.
Now, don’t go away – I’ll be answering some Terrifier 3 FAQs below.
Is Art the Clown immortal?
Terrifier 3 certainly makes it seem that way. While Art the Clown is shot dead (by his own hand) in the first Terrifier film, the opening scene of Terrifier 2 sees him rise again (and kill the coroner in the process). We’ve seen Art’s imperviousness to bullets previously, so in this case it’s clear that he used that invulnerability to conventional weapons to fake his own death, and escape being surrounded – and potentially captured – by police.
In the second movie, Sienna Shaw – who in Terrifier 3 is revealed to be Art’s angelic counterpart, the essential good against the clown’s unmitigated evil – cuts Art’s head off with a sword imbued with a kind of saintly magic. (Terrifier 3, incidentally, introduces a more religious bent than seen in the films before it; Vicky attempts to place a crown of thorns on Sienna’s head, and a statue of the Virgin Mary is seen in a cutaway to a demon: presumably Art without his mask on, in an aesthetic strongly reminiscent of Joseph Bishara’s red-faced-demon in Insidious.) Art appears dead, but survives after his young accomplice from Terrifier 2 (Amelie McLain) retrieves his head from the scene. He’s later seen using Vicky – who in Terrifier 3 is also revealed to be possessed by Art, a kind of mouthpiece or ‘host’ for the mute clown – as a breeding vessel to grow a new head, which he later places back on his own body after killing the first cop to attend his ‘death’ scene.
Despite Sienna managing to do away with Vicky – killing his accomplice, which appear to be key prerequisites for the clown’s reanimation – Art also survives in Terrifier 3.
What happens to Sienna’s brother Jonathan in Terrifier 3?
During Sienna’s showdown with Art and Vicky at the film’s climax, Vicky taunts Sienna and her aunty with a bloody skull, claiming it’s that of Gabbie.
Later, however, Vicky reveals that the skull belongs not to Gabbie, but to Jonathan – who we last saw at his dorm, being warned over the phone by Sienna that Art may be coming for him. We then see Greg arriving at Jonathan’s dorm – lured there by Vicky, presumably, in a voice-replication trick introduced in Terrifier 2 – and Greg’s severed head is later seen atop the Shaws’ Christmas tree. The suggestion is that Jonathan was killed off-screen, and it’s not an unbelievable one, given the same happened to Greg. A pair of glasses (that do look like Jonathan’s) are also seen adorning the skull.
However. However. Leone is obviously setting the story up for a fourth film, with Gabbie and Sienna’s whereabouts unknown and Art once again loose in the streets. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the call tipping Jonathan off forced him into hiding, rendering Vicky and Art unable to get to him and forcing them to use a duplicate skull and claim it was him. (They already established their willingness to do this by previously claiming the skull was Gabbie’s.) It’d feel strange to have Jonathan – a main character – be an unlikely survivor of Terrifier 2, only to meet his end off-screen in the sequel.
Nope – I have a feeling Sienna's brother Jonathan will be back for Terrifier 4!
Will there be a Terrifier 4?
Yes – there will! Leone confirmed in September 2024 that Terrifier 4 was in development; and, if the timing between the previous films is anything to go by, we can expect it to hit theatres in 2026. When will it be set…Easter? Fourth of July? Thanksgiving?
Let me know in the comments section below!
I recently wrote a treatise on intellectual property (IP) in horror, a category the Terrifier series belongs to. Take a look, and explore why 2025’s horror lineup may have an IP problem.
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