Terrifier 3

The Nightmare Before Christmas said that it’s all right to wrap a few scares up under the Christmas tree. Terrifier 3, the latest in the extreme gore franchise, sets fire to the decorations, cuts off your eyelids, and makes you watch the whole house burn. The seasonal setting does nothing to soften the slaughter: If anything, setting the film in the season of family cheer serves as a quick reminder that no one is safe from Art the Clown, the unexpected smash hit series’ signature monster, as he returns for Yuletide. You better watch out indeed.

Art (the inimitable Thornton) is still an enthrallingly charismatic monster whose ghoulish, sadistic creativity seems designed to make the audience tap out. He’s straight out of the classic slasher playbook – a vile and unstoppable weirdo in a bizarre outfit – but he’s also transgressive in that he breaks the rules. Jason never kills kids. Freddie never pulls out a gun. Michael doesn’t torture his victims. And yet again, Thornton finds every way to make him utterly unique, that instantly recognizable black-and-white makeup that implies something even more disgusting under the hood.

But there’s also a shift in the power balance of the Terrifierverse. Victim-turned-supplicant Victoria (Scaffidi, the only actor apart from Thornton in all three films) is not simply in Art’s thrall – she’s become something else, explaining why Art went to all that effort to keep her alive in the first movie. Now she’s an equal and maybe even greater threat to final girl Sienna (Lauren LaVera), who is right to fear that just because she decapitated Art with a magic sword, that’s nowhere near enough to put him down.

Most slasher franchises with a killer that comes back from the dead tend to be very vague about their cosmology – most hewing close to the Maniac Cop 2 reasoning of "the producers want a sequel, so … magic!” Terrifier established that Art can come back from the grave. Terrifier 2 started to build out a bigger fantastical background, with a few sword-and-sorcery elements. Terrifier 3 conjures up some demonology and opens a cosmic gate to the inevitable and already announced Terrifier 4. Again, it’s an element that most slashers don’t even go nudge, and it genuinely feels like writer/director Damian Leone is building a whole universe in which extreme evil is constantly clawing at the window.

But, of course, what really distinguishes the Terrifier series from every other theatrical series is the extraordinary level of graphic violence. If you made it through the first two movies with your lunch still in your stomach, you’ll know exactly what you signed up for here, and you’ll get what you paid for, all caught with clean lighting and long, clear shots. That said, in a rarity for the series, some of the most distressing violence takes place off-screen – which, considering how often bodies are desecrated in the most obscene fashions imaginable, says a lot.

Of course, this can all be too much, and Leone's commitment to making these films feel epic can make the experience grueling – and not just from playing Guess the Organ. Somehow, Terrifier 3 feels longer than Terrifier 2, even though it’s a good 10 minutes shorter. But then, that’s all essential for the grisly set pieces for which the series is known, such as the horrifying way Art gets his Santa suit. Best of all, Leone’s growing mythology allows the wild turns in worldbuilding to make the wait for Terrifier 4 all the more deliciously torturous.

A version of this review previously ran during Fantastic Fest 2024.