Film review: Terrifier 3

It’s been widely reported that during early screenings of the third Terrifier movie, some people didn’t make it to the title card before walking out in disgust. Another patron is said to have got halfway through before they barfed in the cinema, while someone else had to leave because they were having a panic attack.

These people all missed out, and not just because they didn't get to see Chris Jericho lining up to get offed. By director Damien Leone’s own description, the beginning is “not even the big kill scene” (also adding that he funded the movie himself so it would actually get made). Given the amount of head-smashing, blood-spraying, axe-swinging, kid-killing mayhem that goes on in the first five minutes, as Art The Clown returns in a Santa suit and sneaks into a family’s home for no other reason than to turn them into mince, you have to wonder what would have happened if these people had watched to the end.

Here’s the story: after being decapitated by Sienna Shaw in the last flick, Art has managed to reattach his head, and got himself a sidekick in the form of survivor Victoria Heyes, now horribly disfigured. Sienna has been released from the mental hospital in which she’s been living, to stay with her Aunt Jess and her family, just in time for Christmas. Her brother Jonathan (Elliott Fullam, also of Little Punk People), meanwhile, is at college, trying to get on with his life, while also being punished by true crime-addicted fellow students. As Art returns and makes his presence known again, the two have to figure out how to stop him.

Here’s the rest of it: Art absolutely fucks up every single person he comes across. The opening throw doesn’t even have anything to do with the plot, other than to bloodily announce that he’s back, it’s Christmas, and he’s found himself a Santa outfit. Also, that absolutely nobody is beyond being turned inside out. It is some of the most bombastic, gory violence you will ever see. You cannot imagine how many ways there are to die, or how much mess the human body contains. Or, indeed, how ingeniously such things can be filmed.

This is what you’re watching it for, and it’s a blast. There’s gore by the gallon, more giblets than a butcher’s shop, more sawn off bits than a hospital bin. At one point, some poor soul gets a chainsaw up their arse. There’s an act of female onanism that you’ll be able to feel in your groin. Everything is wet – with blood, vomit, piss, anything that can come out of a person – to an insane degree. Literature fans will enjoy the bit where Art puts his own twist on George Orwell’s Room 101 rats from 1984. When he meets Santa in a bar, its almost delightfully wicked.

What makes this all work so well and makes the movie such a thrill – other than the excellent practical effects – is Art himself. David Howard Thornton is a truly brilliant silent actor who does his maniacal lead as a sort of murderous Charlie Chaplin, eagerly adding the Christmas bent to make his capering even better. Acting mostly with his eyes and mouth, as well as cartoonish body movement, his mime-ish expressions and reactions to what’s going on around him are hilarious, camp silent comedy by a true master of the art. Not since Tim Curry’s turn as Pennywise has there been a horror leading man with so much terrible charisma.

This is why the kills that are meant to be are really, really funny. And why when things are meant to be more genuinely horrible, you’ll feel queasy. OTT as it is, the success here is as much down to the wit and the way they tell ‘em as it is the violence.

The plot itself – beyond the ‘here’s how come he’s back and who he’s after’ context – is something of an aside, but it keeps it all moving forward and with a grain of reason to exist.

You’ll be shocked and you’ll wince and be grossed out, and you will laugh your head off, loudly and unattractively, more than once. You’ll marvel at how entertaining a film like this can be, and how much you like Art at times. Walked out before it even got going? You missed the most enjoyably sick movie of the year.

Verdict: 4/5

Terrifier 3 is in UK cinemas now