Shocktober 2024 - Terrifier 3

“Who is this Santa? He’s scaring my kid.” – Concerned mother at the shopping mall.

I love it when a plan comes together, as they used to say on The A-Team back in the day. Terrifier 3 has been on this year’s Shocktober list ever since I learned it was due to be released pre-Halloween, when I covered the previous Terrifiers last year. All I needed was either a speedy streaming release, or for Cineworld to oblige, so I could see it in all its gory glory on the big screen. And boy, Cineworld certainly stepped up to the mark. (It’s always a risk when depending on a cinema release for Shocktober because studios do like to swap things around and push things back – and I have three theatrical releases planned for this year’s 13 Screams. Luckily, they’re all confirmed and booked.)

Okay – a couple of advisories before we get to the meat, here – and trust me, there’s plenty of meat. First, if you haven’t seen the first two Terrifier movies, stay away. This film won’t make an ounce of sense without seeing those. Go to Paramount Plus and watch them, THEN go and see this. This’s vital. Second, you can ignore sites like Screenrant with their comments like “promises to be the scariest film of the year”. It’s not. It’s a horror movie, yes. What you see might well horrify you, but it’s not actually scary. There’s a difference. It’s more repulsive than horrifying. But let’s not argue semantics.

Going back to my first point, it might be an idea for you to read my coverage of the previous movies in last year’s Shocktober, the first is here and click here for the second, before proceeding.

When we last saw him, Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) had been decapitated in the Terrifier amusement park as would-be victim Sienna (Lauren LaVera) came to the rescue of her younger brother Jonathan, (Eliott Fullam) mere seconds before Art was going to end him. Meanwhile, in a psychiatric hospital, Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi) Art’s horribly disfigured victim from the first movie gave birth to Art’s severed head… Yep, see what I mean, you need to see these movies to have a hope of following the plots.

This film opens in the present day, when it’s Christmas Eve, and a fully resurrected Art breaks into a house and slaughters the family. How is this possible?

Well, a flashback reveals that Terrifier 2 took place five years previously. The Little Pale Girl that appeared to Art possessed the body of Victoria, who gave birth to his head (I swear, the film is better than this makes it sound) while Art’s headless body made its way to the institution, where Victoria is (was) being held, and after killing a guard played by wrestler Chris Jericho, they make their was to a deserted house, where Victoria slashed her wrists, while Art goes and sits in a rocking chair – both go into a kind of stasis until they’re re-woken by a couple of workmen in the present day, just before Christmas. (And all this is in the first twenty minutes.)

Sienna has spent all the time since Terrifier 2 in a hospital, suffering from flashbacks and visions of her late best friend who was one of Art’s less fortunate victims, but is now released to go and stay with her Aunt, Uncle and Niece, so back to Miles County she goes. Also on her agenda is to try and re-connect with Jonathan, now a college student whose roommate is dating a girl who hosts a true crime podcast and is of course fascinated by the murder spree of Art.

I guess the big question here is how does putting Art into a traditional Christmas setting affect the now-established formula of the Terrifier films? Well, we’ve had movies like Gremlins which have (hilariously) been labelled “anti-Christmas” by some people who should know better. There have been movies like Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) and Silent Night, Zombie Night (2009) which have brought, respectively a serial killer and zombies into the festive season. There’s plenty of room for Art, despite his origins in All Hallows Eve (2013). Hey, if A Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) can stretch along that gap…

Needless to say, Art goes on another killing spree, which is really why we go to see these movies. The plot after all, is merely a device to get from one killing to the next and I’ve never heard anybody discuss plot nuances of the Terrifier films, but they all talk endlessly abut the gore content of the kills. And strange as it may seem – that’s the whole point. I saw the film on opening day, with a pretty good audience as far as numbers go for a Friday afternoon screening. Despite the news stories about people passing out, vomiting and walking out in disgust at the first blood soaked twenty minutes, the crown that attended the same screening as me got the point. They mostly laughed at the extreme level of gore and mutilation on display here. We all did. And I would hazard a guess that a theory I developed many years ago when I was head writer at GoreZone magazine still holds true.

Back then, we did a Weekend of Horror that was held in London, one at the Odeon Covent Garden, the other at the Prince Charles cinema in Leicester Place, and they were really well attended by hardcore horror fans from all over the country, who were the backbone of our readership. A bewildering amount of black leather, body piercings and tattoos were on display among our fearsome looking clientele. But you never met a nicer, more polite audience. You’d think they’d turn cannibal as soon as the lights were down, but they got all their violence out of their system vicariously, by watching it on the screen. I reckon that’s why horror keeps on ebbing and flowing at the cinema – and the tide is certainly high at the moment. Art the Clown has ALREADY beaten the Joker in its first week of release. And that’s a 2 million budget movie beating a 200 million one.

So, what did those who reportedly walked out miss? Bless their delicate little socks, they never got to see Art murder a Santa imitator, nor did they see him take the place of a department store Santa and start distributing explosives, killing every man, woman and child in range. They also missed seeing what happens when a person is dragged out of a shower and has a chainsaw introduced to his rear end. But maybe it’s best they didn’t see all that.

Art wanders around, dressed as Santa, with his sack full of goodies, which include hammers, a fire extinguisher type thing that fires liquid nitrogen, Stanley knives, a chainsaw… all this and more, to get his party going.

Kudos must go to David Howard Thornton for another memorable performance. As I’ve said before, without his outstanding mime skills, Art just wouldn’t be the same. He actually makes Art likeable. Yes, I said likeable – despite his homicidal psychopath tendencies. We, In the audience are rooting for him, as we cheered the likes of Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees, back in the day. In fact, in the pantheon of horror movie killers, I’d place Art as second only to Jason as far as imaginative kills and a deftness with power tools goes.

A year ago, the story was that this third movie was going to be the final, writer/director Damien Leone was calling it a day with Art. Happily, at the end of this one, Art gets on a bus and heads, presumably, to re-enter his stasis, until someone is stupid enough to rouse him again. And I’m looking forward to the now confirmed fourth instalment.

Art is life and life is Art, after all.

I’ll leave you with an image I took as I was entering the screening room. I asked a staff member if they were serious, she replied they were. Anybody feeling unwell would be taken to sit down, and have a warm drink to settle themselves. But as I was told, if I did that – I’d miss the movie. They know me too well.

Rob Rating = 9