Review #322: Terrifier 3 (2024)

The Twelve Slays of Christmas #8 - Terrifier 3 (2024)

[This movie is fairly new and as such doesn't appear to be streaming anywhere for free, but you can purchase it on Amazon Prime Video, Fandango at Home, and Apple TV.]

The first thing I want to say is that it's a rare move to have one entry in a film series be holiday-themed; I'm sure it's happened before but this is the only instance I can think of, especially for a horror series. So this one has the novelty of that going for it.

I'm not going to try and summarize the plot very accurately; I'll just say that this movie takes place five years after Terrifier 2 (I reviewed 1 & 2 last year, so go back and read those if you want a recap) and it follows Sierra, the survivor of that film, as she and her remaining family are beset upon once again by Art the supernatural murderer clown. There's some Christmas-based hijinks in here but the majority of the action could be set whenever or wherever.

I'll be straight with this one: I didn't much care for it, for most of the same reasons I didn't care for Terrifier 2. Where Terrifier 1 was a short-but-sweet slasher movie with very little chaff and lots of great practical effects, Terrifier 2 and 3 both cram so much plot and backstory and prophecy and sequel bait into their runtime and I'm not exaggerating when I say I couldn't care less about any of that. Terrifier 3 is less obtrusive than Terrifier 2 (it's also got a shorter runtime which is a plus) but both of them are pretty bad in that regard. I don't care about Sierra's destiny to become a DnD character (and I say that as a person who has made DnD a huge part of his life)- it's just not what I want out of this series. Conversely, I would literally watch ninety minutes of Art pantomiming if given the opportunity- but instead of goofy gory antics, way too much of the movie is a half-baked plot about demon possession and a gate to hell and a magic sword and an angel warrior and blah blah blah who cares!

The practical effects are of course phenomenal, and many of the kills are utterly disturbing. (Several went a bit too far in my opinion, but I'm not knocking the movie for that because, well, it's kind of this series' main selling point.) But a couple of the murder scenes just go on for twice as long as they should have. Like Terrifier 2, they could have easily edited out a big chunk of this film (it could've been 90 minutes easy) and not lost very much of consequence. At the end of the day, I once again just found the characters too boring and most of the action completely uninteresting. There were some standout moments (again, any scene where Art is having a jolly old time, like the bar scene or the mall santa scene) but everything else made my attention start slipping.

I also need to point out that, once again, Hollywood just doesn't understand podcasts. (In TV and movies, the only podcasts that exist are about local murders. This movie is no exception.)

Supposedly they're already working on Terrifier 4 (the ending of this one certainly left their work cut out for them) and I'm sorry to say I'm not at all excited about that fact. I'll most likely watch it but I'm pretty sure Terrifier 1 is going to continue to be the outlier.

Overall Rating: 5/10 Obvious Christ Allegories (Oh Hey, Allegory Has Gory In It)

Missing Characters: I don't know the context, but according to IMDB trivia there was originally going to be a scene in this film where Frank Stallone played Jesus. Maybe next time I guess!