Terrifier 3 Review: Art The Clown’s Gleefully Brutal Return Is A Christmas-Themed Gift For Gorehounds

Perhaps more than any other genre following, horror fans appreciate and celebrate gnarly homegrown creations far more than think-tank Hollywood productions. Slasher villains just don’t get more do-it-yourself than Art the Clown, the muted ghoul-igan at the bifurcated heart of Damien Leone’s Terrifier franchise and more. So it’s no surprise that David Howard Thornton was rather quickly brought back to get bloodier than ever for the jubilantly gruesome gorefest that is Terrifier 3 following the success of Terrifier 2.

Two years have passed since Terrifier 2 broke the indie horror mold with its 138-minute runtime built atop a shoestring-esque budget and some of the nastiest practical effects ever put to film. In that time, the fandom has exploded to the point where Art the Clown shirts and merch are becoming nearly as common as Freddy, Jason and Chucky. The budget also exploded for the latest sequel, giving Leone & Co. more resources than ever to gross out more moviegoers than ever. The math just works!

Shifting the holiday-specific shenanigans from Halloween to Christmas, Terrifier 3 definitely comes across as a step up from the first two films by way of production design, location changes, and number of ways to completely fuck up victim’s bodies. We also get honest-to-goodness B-movie cameos even outside of Chris Jericho’s return, causing a few “pinch me” moments to make sure it isn’t all just a tinsel-covered fever dream.

Where Terrifier 3 starts to fall apart beneath all of its mangled corpses however, is with the story, which continues to build upon this so-so canon without much of it being 100% coherent or fun to follow along with. We do catch up with just about everyone who lived through the first two films, from Samantha Scaffidi’s monstrous survivor Vicky to Lauren LaVera’s Sienna to Elliot Fullam’s Jonathan. No one’s performance is anywhere near the level of Thornton’s madcap glee, though, so it’s on similarly uneven grounds as previous films.

David Howard Thornton executes his best and freakiest performance yet as fan-fave Art the Clown.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly what makes Art the Clown so unsettling and engaging to watch, but Thornton seems to be thoroughly informed on the matter. Part of it is how well he can sell seemingly any emotion with an overstated reaction, complete with myriad brilliant editing cuts between him and other characters. And part of it is how convincing he is at instantly shifting from childlike appreciation to sinister curiosity to murderous animosity.

Without tipping a disembodied head to how the black-and-white clown returns to form after Terrifier 2's horrifying post-credits scene, suffice to say he is back after a bit of a time-jump, and now has Samantha Scaffidi's Vicky as his endlessly disturbing sidekick. Hand to the fire, I think she may actually be a nastier beast than even Art himself, and she shows her support for his mayhem in... unique ways. If I say "broken glass sex toy," the absolute worst imagery you can conjure up is the ground floor that Damien Leone tap dances across.

So yes, Vicky is a formidable partner-in-slime for this franchise, but we're here for Art the Clown, and he is here for us. And not always with our best intentions in mind, as proven in the merciless opening scene featuring the inventive killer taking out an entire family on Christmas Eve with random, reckless abandon. But not even that level of brutality will make viewers spend even a second of the next two hours reassessing their love for this sadistic clown. This movie isn't called Treat Passively-er, after all, and Art lives up to the title descriptor in every which way.

Two particular highlights regarding David Howard Thornton's performance involve other characters wearing Santa Claus outfits, one inside a mall and one inside a bar. In different ways, they both lean into Art's playfulness and moments where he genuinely connects with other characters. You know, before heads are split open and eyeballs get eaten or whatever.

Terrifier 3 delivers a blood-red Christmas with another round of magnificently brutal kills.

Christmas horror is an under-sung subgenre, but even if the opposite were the case, Terrifier 3 would still rank as an upper echelon treat thanks to just how heavily the production design and special effects utilize holiday iconography throughout the entire movie. "Santa Art" gives an already signature character another layer of bizarre menace, but that's just the sharp tip of the icicle.

From characters' organs being used as Christmas tree decorations to highly destructive "gifts" to Art's new skill for freezing things, the wintery holiday season is central to many of Terrifier 3's best set pieces – to the point where I'm more than halfway behind the idea of Leone going full-tilt on theming future sequels around other holidays, days of significance, destination locations, national landmarks, cultural events, etc. Seeing Art the Clown to murder-wild on an entire stadium of MLB Opening Day attendees would be incredible.

Not that Terrifier 3 exclusively hinges on specific theming to coat the walls red with viscera. Art the Clown puts a chainsaw to use in a way that is unmistakably free from Christmas cheer, and once rats enter the picture... well, the less said about that, the better in this spoiler-free piece. Except to say, "Holy shit, that rat-related nightmare fuel!"

Scattershot storytelling and long runtimes remain the Terrifier franchise’s biggest issues.

For all the guts and glory on display when Art the Clown is physically showing characters their intestinal fortitude, Terrifier 3 further proves that Damien Leone's storytelling chops seem to be his only shortcoming. Rather than setting its central antagonist out for randomly occurring murder sprees, the filmmaker continues building out a baffling quasi-mythos that remains tied to Sienna and Jonathan for... reasons?

I don't exactly hate Sienna or Jonathan or the performances from LaVera and Fullam, and by the end of this third feature, SIenna rather deservingly reaches the messianic stage of Final Girl-dom. But at no point do I ever whole-heartedly care what happens to them either, so long as it isn't "get killed offscreen by a minor threat." It's not so different from a large number of horror releases from the '80s onward, but the vast majority of those movies kept their runtimes around 90 minutes.

Terrifier did just that with its whip-cracking runtime of 85 minutes, and it's ambitious to a fault that Leone ramped the output up by more than 40 minutes for the second movie. But even though the third chapter is shorter, it's not nearly short enough. The writer/director gets all my support for wanting to give fans the meatiest sequel possible, but I'm not sure even the most brilliant plotting would add all that much to watching Art the Clown maul whatever's in his path.

If Terrifier 4 ends up being eight to ten completely disparate segments featuring Art the Clown going ham on victims Looney Tunes-style, I'll be first in line with a lumpy Acme-branded trashbag at my side. Until then, I'll know who I won't want to run into under the mistletoe this Christmas. To be clear, it's both Art and Vicky.

But anytime I need a quick fix of something wickedly dark and harrowing to go along with a holiday rewatch of Black Christmas, Gremlins or Krampus, I already know Terrifier 3 is a holly jolly good time.