What a fascinating indie success story the Terrifier franchise is. Damian Leone's ultra-gory slasher franchise, anchored by the now iconic Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton in the role of a lifetime), once struggled to find a distributor and had to resort to indie crowdfunding campaigns to get made, and now it's outgrossing the sequel to Joker at the box office. The screening I went to (the only one within about 100 miles, if you're curious about the state of film in Maine) was completely packed with a mixed crowd of people of all ages, including a distressing amount of young people. It's truly been the little indie franchise that could, and what makes it's success even more fascinating is that hasn't come at the cost of Leone's creativity. The latest in the franchise, Terrifier 3 is, for the most part, the movie Leone set out to make, a largely uncompromised, delightfully nasty thriller that shows a clear growth in the craft from it's creator.
Terrifier 3 manages to walk an effective tight-rope between the lean and mean structure of the first film and the more long-form, story-focused structure of the second. The film has neither the paper-thin characters of the first, nor does it suffer as much from the sluggish exposition and set-up of the second, allowing it to hit the ground running very effectively. The film's opening scene, a perfectly grindhouse-style short film in and of itself, sets the tone very effectively as we witness a family befall the unfortunate fate of catching Art's attention. As a disguised Art takes his time working through the house, Leone wields tension like a knife, taking care to ensure we never see the clown's face until the terror has already started, and the violence is surprisingly restrained until it fully erupts in an explosion of non-stop carnage. Limbs are severed, chests are caved in with an axe, and blood flies like a sprinkler before we even get the opening title. It's shocking and mean-spirited, but the message: Art is back, baby, and not a soul is safe.
This sense of tension hangs over every scene with the clown, and Thornton continues to be fantastic in the role. Never so much as making a sound, Art looms over everything, his childish, excitable demeanor contrasting his endless cruelty, Thornton exaggerating his motions to make everything feel like he's simply playing a game as he haplessly slaughters his way through the film's runtime. In one of the film's best moments, he listens in on a conversation between a couple, blissfully unaware of the monster looming around the corner, and goes through a rollercoaster of intrigue to joy to genuine anger, the gears turning in his head as he plots his next step, while the biggest laugh in the movie is his overjoyed reaction to seeing a mall Santa sitting in a bar. The insistence on silence feeds into the ambiguity of the character. Is Art truly childlike, a monster playing with the world like toys? Is he playing us for fools as he lures his targets into a false sense of security? It's a fascinatingly physical performance, one that immediately helps one understand the character's explosion in popularity.
Of course, one of the strong points of Terrifier 2 is giving the franchise a proper protagonist in the form of Sienna (Lauren LaVera), and this film does the character justice once more. Freshly out of a mental hospital after Art's previous rampage, Sienna is a ball of barely contained trauma and rage, trying her best to keep things together as she finds herself settling in with her aunt's family. LaVera, a near immediate Scream Queen after her work in the last film, is very good, playing Sienna's emotional state very genuinely without losing the ferocious spark that makes the character worth fighting for, and the film does well to examine her trauma before she's forced into conflict with Art without just making it feel like padding in between the kills. Like the second film, Terrifier 3 also leans into the greater idea of a deeper mythology behind Art, set up largely by the presence of the demonic presence responsible for his resurrection. Rather than it simply being an implied force, the demon takes on a voice of it's own through Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi), the sole survivor of the first film. Scaffidi has a lot of fun playing into the demonic presence, a cruel, boisterous force in contrast to the silent Art, and they make for a fun pairing in the times where the movie lets them play together.
The peeks into the mythology, hints of some sort of cosmic war between good and evil with Sienna and Art as the respective pieces, are fascinating, and one of the film's most striking moments is Sienna witnessing the apparent forging of the magic blade that can kill Art seemingly for good. An Uruk-Hai-like demon, hunched over an anvil while a living statue of the Virgin Mary clutches a chain around it's neck, works away at the forge, and Sienna snaps back to the present before we can learn anymore. This, combined with the suitably grim ending, sets the stage for an epic conclusion in the franchise's fourth entry, and the set-up never feels like a forced pitch for a sequel. It intrigues the audience rather than demands their attention.
Unfortunately, the ending is where the "for the most part" from the start of this review rears it's head. Leone has admitted to cutting about 20-30 minutes of the film to make it an easier theatrical experience, with the film's climax showing the most obvious sign of this. The climactic, terrifying reunion of Sienna and Art simply happens with little build-up, while two prominent characters suffer gruesome deaths entirely off-screen, a drastic departure from the series style. Another plot thread, a Christmas party attended by Sienna's brother Jonathan (Elliot Fullam), is set up with no pay-off, while Sienna digging up the sword is handled off-screen. It creates an uneven experience, a feeling that decisions were reluctantly made behind the scenes for the sake of pacing, and while it doesn't drag the film down massively, it still feels disorienting, feeling as though we're seeing an incomplete story.
Even with it's minor pacing bumps, Terrifier 3 is a blast, standing among the strongest horror offerings in a strong year for horror already. It's kills are suitably nasty, it's inspired visuals evoke the sleazy slashers of the 70s and 80s, and while this sort of thing is obviously of an acquired taste, I'm all on board the Art train. Make way for the real Clown Prince of Crime.
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