When Art the Clown and his Terrifier franchise officially arrived in 2016, most viewers hesitated to recognize the brutal antagonist as anything more than a lowbrow attempt at harnessing the accidental magic of 1980s slasher films. Hardcore horror fans, however, were the first to identify something unique about Art the Clown and filmmaker Damien Leone's slowly expanding universe of lo-fi gorecore. A decade after the villain's first short film appearance, Terrifier 3 now cements the indie horror franchise and its mischievous killer clown as both organic legends of genre and authentically shocking water cooler fodder for mainstream audiences.
The franchise's third — and most expensive — film drags its sack of corpses outside its previous Halloween setting to joyously savage and mutilate the wholesomeness of Christmas. Ruining the happiest time of the year is a classic horror trope, and for good reason. The juxtaposition of hot red blood spraying across pristine virgin snow is an evocative oxymoron that excites and upsets in equal measure.
While the holiday setting serves mainly as a backdrop in Terrifier 3, its highly controversial opening sequence utilizes holiday horror to its total (and entirely depraved) advantage. This unforgiving and genuinely shocking first scene depicts a happy family of four, including two young children, sleeping soundly on Christmas Eve until Art the Clown appears in a Santa suit with a rusty hatchet. No one is safe, and nothing is off-limits, so viewer discretion is strongly advised. I cannot stress enough that this movie is not for everyone — most people really.
If, however, the idea of hardcore exploitation horror piques the interest, it's okay to shrug off the shame that might accompany those natural curiosities. Try to consider Terrifier 3 as an experimental film. Not experimental in the traditional arthouse cinema sense, though; instead, it's an experiment in the visual medium of the grotesque. It's honestly not all that different from Matthew Barney's unsettling and visceral The Cremaster Cycle films. Leone is a mad scientist attempting to capture as much sinister grime, guts and gore as possible within a nauseating two-hour runtime. The proudly displayed gore in Terrifier 3 is an art form. And unlike many low-budget exploitation films, Leone takes great care, precision and pride in his practical effects, which he crafts himself.
These handmade practical effects are the primary attractions of the Terrifier films. The nastiness increasingly takes centre stage with each Art the Clown outing, and there's never any pretence about what matters here. This is where you can sense the core audience's appreciation. Leone's third film offers zero apologies or shame surrounding its freakish exploration of our primal curiosities — carnage, torture and the darkest thoughts most of us keep tucked away.
Terrifier 3 is a punk expulsion of the societal shame that's always cloaked violence in cinema. Then, it drags its audience as far into the darkness as possible. The film succeeds in its experimental shock treatments more than ever before. The faint of heart should steer well clear of this one. The sure-to-be infamous chainsaw-shower scene is not something I'm personally thrilled to have burned into my mind.
It's sure easy to argue that the narrative of Terrifier 3 takes a backseat to its violence. Critics will likely slam the sequel for its lack of plot and minimal character development. While there's some truth to this reductive take, there's a reason this film terrifies fans in a uniquely disturbing and upsetting way. Other underground video nasties rarely evoke the same dirty unease that Leone's films establish. This is due to the unique universe he's built, not just with gore but through simple storytelling, an uncanny aesthetic, and at least one brilliant performance at its rotten centre.
David Howard Thornton's silent performance as Art the Clown is beyond sinister; it's expertly and sincerely uncanny. This essential casting resembles Robert Englund's legacy portrayal of Freddy Krueger in the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. These films can't just put any background actor under the makeup — there must be an authentic madman beneath that face paint. Englund and Thornton perform and embody bouffon at its dirtiest, most rotten and base core. At this point, they belong in the same breath as legendary horror performances that'll never be forgotten, whether we like it or not.
Considering the independent and organic origins of Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Pinhead, it's obviously impossible to reverse-engineer a horror icon. Over the past two decades, studios have repeatedly failed to establish a new wave of cult antiheroes. Yet Leone has done it single-handedly with Art the Clown. It's just further proof that these pop culture villains must be created outside the studio system by talented newcomers with something to prove. Is it a "good" film? I guess not. Is it an immortal tentpole of popular culture? Absolutely. There will be no escaping this goddamn clown anytime soon.