I caught Terrifier 2 a few weeks ago. While the runtime was ridiculous, there is a pleasing homemade quality to the whole enterprise.
David Howard Thornton‘s performance as Art the Clown is eye-catching. Art is always playing to an audience (mostly himself and/or whoever is unlucky enough to be in close proximity.
He is matched by Lauren LaVera as lead final girl Sienna.
While her costume helps (she spends most of the movie in a homemade suit of armour and wings), she is as iconic as Art himself. She also brings a pathos and charisma that the movie needs.
Maybe it is an expectation related to the genre but there is too much runway for the story we have. Bloated as it is, the appealing leads are almost enough to carry it home.
Flaws aside, I was curious to see what Art and Sienna got up to in their second face-off.
Terrifier 3 ended up being the first movie I saw in theatres after Trump was elected.
The irony was not lost - a foe thought vanquished returns at Christmas to enact even greater horrors on the world.
We will have to wait till January 20 to see what Il Douche actually does (my guess? Worse than last time).
Watching Terrifier 3, the film felt like a pitch-black joke, throwing up a bloody middle finger to the idea that anything can get better.
The film’s opening set piece is a brutal throwing down of the gauntlet. In this universe, nothing is sacred or protected.
Maybe that is why I felt so unmoved by it.
Coming a few days after the US election, Art’s debasement of bodies and social mores felt like an exorcism.
By the luck of its release date, this film felt like a vehicle for this particular moment.
This movie is mean. Terrifier 3 leans into the idea of destroying symbols of Christmas - it treatings the season and everything around it as a taboo that must be shattered into a million bloody pieces.
The most significant way it does this is by having Art kill kids.
As with every slasher, we get Art tearing (often literally) through horny 20-somethings, but the film shows no compunction about turning its antagonist on a group of moppets waiting to see Santa Clause.
We only see a flash of one of these victims onscreen, but it comes right at the start of the movie. From there on in, there is an underlying sense of danger to Art’s reappearances.
He has shown no compunction about killing adults before, but the filmmakers use the Christmas setting to up the ante.
The stakes are raised when the film cuts to Sienna, and she is paired with younger cousin Gabbie (Antonella Rose). After Art has blown up a mall full of moppets, it is not clear if his veteran nemesis will be able to protect the young girl.
As with Terrifier 2, LaVera brings such a pathos and earnestness to the role that she anchors her section of the film.
Physically and psychologically traumatised from her triumph in the previous instalment, Sienna is at a low ebb.
No longer a warrior Angel, Sienna becomes a Christlike figure (at least in terms of the punishments Art has contrived for her)
Somehow the movie is also - relatively - lighter in tone, compared with its predecessors:Art the Clown’s bashful reaction when he overhears a true crime podcaster gush about wanting to meet him; the mall scene where Art stands in for Santa and starts handing out gifts.
There is a mordant edge to the film that somehow manages to offset the brutality.
The scene which best epitomises this tone (and the best scene in the movie) is Art’s confrontation with a drunken Santa (Daniel Roebuck) and his friend at an empty bar.
Art’s childlike glee at ‘recognising’ St Nick; Clint Howard’s sozzled performance as a human echo; the slow ramp from childish to fatal pranks. It is tense and funny in a way that feels more sustained than any other scene in the film.
The violence is graphic and occasionally unique: Art kills people with guns, bombs, a freeze ray and whatever else he can find.
There is no nuance or real subtext. Art is Bugs Bunny with Will E. Coyote’s arsenal. He just wants to mess with people, or mess them up, or turn them into messes.
The ending is a familiar convention from a thousand slashers - the villain is in the wind and our heroine is barely alive. Generally slasher endings operate like a final jolt for the audience, a final scare that undoes the seeming restoration of order.
Even without the knowledge that a sequel is in the works, Terrifier 3’s finale feels like a cliffhanger for something even more unhinged.
Art has broken all rules of god and man. What lies beyond for the diabolical trickster to debase?
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