Art The Clown’s Coming To Town with more than just gifts.

As a life-long horror fan, these days it can be a genuine challenge to find something that strikes the nerves inside. Gore usually still registers to some degree. Even when I’ve seen the pit scene from Saw II a dozen times, the one where consistent main character Amanda is pushed in, immediately being pierced all over by needles, I can’t help but grit my teeth and look away.

There’s something about body horror that supernatural scares can’t touch. Watching flesh being ripped apart, sliced, and bludgeoned is the closest on-screen serial killers will ever get to something that could happen to us in real life, whether on purpose or accident (hopefully only the latter). In the usual case, movies tend to make space in between these graphic scenes, allowing the audience to unclench for a bit before the next barrage aimed at the eyes.

Terrifier 3 laughs loudly at this sentiment, and after reflecting at the past outings, decides to fill as much screen time as possible with bodily carnage, along with gifting theater goers with new creative ways to open up to others (literally).

The third numbered entry kicks off five years later from Terrifier 2. The Shaw siblings, Sienna (Lauren LaVera) and Jonathan (Elliott Fullam), are attempting to pick up their lives, Sienna being released from a mental health facility to stay with her aunt and uncle, while Jonathan is now going through college.

Meanwhile, Art The Clown (David Howard Thornton) seems to have a guardian devil over his shoulder, allowing for a resurrection through a chain of events leading him back to the first survivor, Vicky Hayes (Samantha Scaffidi), where she was being held. Upon breaking her out during the flashback sequence, the two ride off to the familiar setting of Art’s workbench to plot anew, leading back to present day.

LaVera’s turn as the reluctant heroine Sienna was brilliant, for the material given to her. I can’t imagine anything less than sheer sympathy being given from the audience in the character’s struggle to keep it all together after witnessing not only her friends get slaughtered in the second film, but her mother as well. The movie’s contention through Jonathan’s college roommate, in replying to his girlfriend insisting Sienna be over it and his clinched rebuttal that “There are things that you just don’t move past,” was honestly fantastic. By the end of the movie, much more devastation is witnessed and experienced by Sienna, and if nothing else, my buy-in for the fourth chapter will be seeing her take full revenge, as I can’t see her trying to live a real life again.

One aspect from the, as of this entry, Terrifier trilogy that cannot be understated is just how violent and graphic each chapter is. There was a level of shock in viewing the first movie that still registers with me to this day, not so much in what in essence was done, but in what the independent productions had created for audiences to see.

There is a distinct difference in seeing a freshly killed corpse in two halves, which is already too much for some would-be viewers, and the act in creating that imagery. Director Damien Leone (excuse the pun) cuts out the middleman of letting the imagination create the lead-up events and shows every gut-wrenching detail of the tragedies unfolding Art’s victims. Let me not sugarcoat a thing here; these scenes are rough to watch and will stick with viewers well after the credits roll, but that is also the payoff for Leone’s dare of dreaming into cinema Art’s deadly antics.

Somehow, even after all the ways of disposing numerous citizens of Miles County put on display, the third film finds more methods to employ macabre mischief on the innocent. Where Terrifier 2 took on Halloween, just like in the original entry, 3 moves to another favorite holiday for reigning terror upon; Christmas.

Before watching this film, I hadn’t thought about the fact that each season of celebration may have its own unique situations that could be exploited in horrifying fashion, and Leone nor Thornton disappointed there. From the setting of a Santa meet-&-greet at the mall to the curiosity of a child bringing them to wake in their home, alerted by steps seeming to come from the rooftop, both scene fixtures usually bring little fear out of holiday lovers, making them ripe for exploitation.

Thornton’s reign as Art has always had a duality to it; Art the Clown, just by looking at him, isn’t necessarily unnerving, even when making his iconic wide grins, and that gives into the scary, dark part of just how far he can take the thinnest layer of open trust naturally given by his would-be victims.

One of the first scenes in the movie shows off Art encountering “Santa” as the jolly Saint Nick avatar sits at a bar with friends after-hours. Even as the bartender tries to alert him to his suspicion of the monochrome performer, the holiday actor and company, upon seeing the clown and interacting a bit, feel no need to throw up their guards. That’s the truly scary part; I don’t necessarily think I, or most other people, would either, because of how out-of-the-ordinary it is to imagine a friendly situation to take a turn into a hostile and menacing one. The mind just doesn’t conceptualize that, even at the height of paranoia, and that’s why Thornton’s silent antagonist works so damn well.

As horrifying as this film was and how Art’s actions were anticipated for a return patron to the franchise, even after the last few entries, Terrifier 3 is far from stale. The move to a different holiday served the film well, allowing the silent clown to apply a more unique and nuanced version of seasons greetings to all unlucky enough to encounter him. If you’re even remotely curious on how this entry stacks up to the rest, come see for yourself, but take with you the assurance that Art will leave you stunned in ways that horror films haven’t in years. Good or bad, the clown still clings onto his crown of being one of the most iconic movie villains to date.

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