Does horror need to be anything more? There is a generational push towards something. The A24ization of Genre Movies, horror movies with aesthetic afterglows and trauma as motif, character, and story. Sometimes it’s enough for a clown to brutalize some victims in an increasingly disturbing series of violent vignettes. It’s okay just to make horror for horror’s sake. There’s a specific audience that only wants the filmmaker to do exactly that. Give us blood and give us murder and crank it up in every sequel. Give us Art for Art’s Sake. Because form can be function. The expression of horror can be horror in and of itself. Genre can be pure and grounded in only its descriptive elements.
As a continuation of the Terrifier movies and the flat story arc of Art the Clown, Terrifier 3 is more. More Terrifier. More Art the Clown. More blood and more murder. And it feels good, too, because it’s so grounded in Yuletide aesthetics — those last two movies have one aesthetic mode and it’s to be grimly boring. It’s more of a series that isn’t much to begin with. These are basic serial killer tropes stretched out by the fun appearance and curious personality of the clown.
Terrifier 3 is funny in certain ways it has been sequelized. It feels like a Legacy Sequel in peculiar ways. A story of survivors of a thought-to-be-forgotten evil. They have to reckon with the returning force of clownish darkness as it pervades their lives. It borrows tropes from these comeback movies, hilariously, like a true crime podcast invested in what happened before. It has these funny earmarks of a series trying to reckon with its past and place in the present by shoehorning modernized character elements into itself, only made funny because it absolutely doesn’t need to. These are not character driven trauma stories and it’s so completely silly these ideas have started to color the edges of these sequel treatments. It’s absurd that these movies are playing with lore and trying to divine anything more grandiose than a killer clown making a mess of some victim and playing with their guts.
The film tries to do one more thing, which also feels structurally opposed to the brutalizing Terrifier treatment, angling for small Fantasy elements, as though it were also akin to a late-sequel of a series like Friday the 13th, or any series that went too long, which introduced such fanciful elements just for the sake of new ideas. Once again, Terrifier 3 does not have to do this. And that makes it funny when it does.
The real pleasure of the movie, albeit slight and aesthetic, are the Christmas elements ornamenting the movie. The bright cheerful holiday always makes a good contrast for horror. It adds something Halloween cannot do as a holiday. Terror around the holidays is actually a good central conceit for exploring familial trauma and the pressures of a town against its victims, which is also very funny to find in a Terrifier sequel.
Horror movies draw out their sequels this way. We add hodgepodge accoutrements that may or may not fit the other pieces already in place. We create reason for expansion where the initial concept is already enough. You can just keep making Art the Clown movies and hang new aesthetics on them. The right audience will go every time.
The other kind of review we can write for these movies is a formulaic one. We can describe the gruesome kills one by one and give a play-by-play of the effects work shown in them. Suffice to say, the kills and their creativity have increased. Terrifier (2016) is a bad movie with a great villain concept. Terrifier 2 (2022) is a bad movie with a great villain concept and great kills. Terrifier 3 is worth your time, has a great villain concept, terrific kills, and a seasonal setting that justifies itself.
The increasing brutality of the movies is the clever heart of writer-director Damien Leone’s series. Leone has tripled-down, appropriately, leaving more room for Clownsploitation to come. Importantly, where Terrifier 3 succeeds are in the basic categories. The way it’s a simple slasher movie is the core of the appeal. Everything else is window dressing. This is the best Terrifier yet because it accelerates fully on the things that people who watch Terrifier movies want. It understands, mostly, that horror movies can be horror movies, and do not need to be more, and when it’s anything else, it’s pretty funny that it’s making the extra effort. Terrifier 3 finally justifies Art the Clown. You can finally enjoy the series as Art for Art’s Sake.