Terrifier 3 is one hell of a way to kick off the return of Graphic Content. Rather than diving back into comics, I instead want to turn to the latest in the graphically violent exploits of Art the Clown.

This ended up skewing more toward a review, so I might as well embrace that. This is a spoiler-free review of Terrifier 3.

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Terrifier 3: Holiday Hell and Grisly Gore

I have a decidedly mixed history with Terrifier. I was pretty annoyed by the paranormal swerve of the first film from 2016 during the 31 Days of Halloween project. The gore was pretty great, which to me seems to be the primary driver of the project. The cinematography was passable, if not a bit flat. But by far, the character of Art the Clown intrigued me.

He was disturbing, funny, and prone to bouts of very relatable and human quirks. That is what pulled me into the first film. Nothing makes me laugh like the incongruity of Art going stonefaced, whipping out a Glock. However, the paranormal reveal of the character harmed the overall movie. I felt tricked, and not in a fun way, especially with how much of a swerve the reveal was.

Terrifier 2 (2022) was a letdown, a film of diminishing returns. It doubled down on the paranormal antics of a character who was vastly preferable as just a crazy clown. Worse now, the film was introducing lore to the character and positioning the series as a battle between good and evil. It was still gory and the cinematography had improved, as well. But still, something stuck in my craw.

Just let the clown be a crazy clown. He doesn’t need extra significance. He doesn’t need a sidekick.

So with the background and perspective, I saw Terrifier 3 (2024).

Terrifier 3: Impressions

I understand the direction Damien Leone wants to take in the series. The emphasis on continuity and world-building is now a firmly established element of what Terrifier is as a franchise. It is not what drew me to the first film, but this is the vision of the creator. I came into Terrifier 3 expecting all of this, and the film doubled down on all those elements. But I didn’t necessarily hate it either.

The Good

The gore continues to be the highlight of Terrifier as a franchise. The production team unleashed all sorts of foul brutalizations to make people squirm, and it is a challenge to figure out which kill was the worst fate, conceptually. As a whole, the kills were largely fantastic and there was plenty of blood to be had.

The Christmas theme of the film was a nice spin on the formula and presented some interesting situations. Seeing Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) wander around in the world’s greasiest Santa suit was quite a fun image, especially given the clown’s propensity for lugging around a garbage bag of tools to begin with. I don’t know if this theme was a one-off, but I would like to see Terrifier 4 tackle Arbor Day. The addition of an original song about a “Terrifier Christmas” is a potentially fun pattern to follow in other releases.

The cinematography in this film was also a marked improvement over the prior two. The lighting appeared better overall, and there were more interesting uses of the camera than I had seen in the entirety of Terrifier 2. The film also managed to shake some of the overly digital appearance that dogged the prior entries.

I also appreciated the cameos from some horror icons. I won’t spoil who, but if you know, you know.

The Not-So-Good

There are elements of the film that are fun as hell, but you have to wade through an unnecessarily severe story exploring a battle between good and evil rather than dealing with a more compelling exploration of trauma and the effects of surviving a massacre. Sienna Shaw (Lauren LeVera, turning in the best performance outside of Art the Clown) is a survivor of a bonkers massacre, and exploring the consequences of that is the best part of the story presented; tying her experiences to some cosmic war, and the inheritance of a sword from her artist father is just uninspired.

The lack of consistency between elements established in Terrifier 2 (2022) also proves an obstacle; we get references to the clown cafe and even hear the music on a mall speaker, but a vision of it would make sense, some kind of thematic nightmare sequence, much as how the concept was used in the first film.

The utilization of Jonathan Shaw (Elliot Fullam), for example, is another element of how Terrifier 3‘s lack of consistency and inability to show things that are relevant to the story; Large swaths of the film are just elements of “this happens” or “this happened off-screen” and it is largely unsatisfying.

The film’s ending is even more of a sequel hook than the prior films, and I can’t say I was a fan. I preferred the weirdness of Art being the highlight in those sequel teases of the first two Terrifier films; here, it feels like we’re in Terrifier 3: Chapter One territory. It’s very clumsy and overly direct, unlike the others.

Terrifier 3: The Bottom Line

More of the same, only more so, Terrifier 3 fully commits to the larger story Leone wants to tell, often to mixed results and an unsatisfying sequel-hook ending, and character fates being handled off-screen end up annoying. When the series indulges in the holiday havoc and extreme kills, the film works best. A tepid story, however, spoils the Christmas spirit.