Well, I doubt anyone is gonna be watching this one who didn’t know what they were signing up for. If the axe-wielding killer clown without a dental plan doesn’t rat them out, the title Terrifier aught to get the point across. I loved Terrifier 2 but I hated the first film (and the original anthology even more) so I was a bit nervous if they’d follow through on the promise of part 2. They did.

Terrifier 3 picks up where the mid-credit scene of Terrifier 2 left off… and its gorier and even more F’ed up than before. Art is back and, five years and plenty of therapy later, so too is our avenging teen angel Sienna. She’s visiting her aunt and uncle for Christmas while Art snoops around… confusing his franchise for Silent Night, Deadly Night (only doing it much better).

This film is gorier and sicker and maybe Damien Leone needs therapy himself given his elbow deep love of practical splatter. He throws good taste to the wind… he’s getting away with as much as he can. And I wonder how they get an R rating… Wait. What? Terrifier 3 is unrated? And in major movie theaters? Huh.

Some of the kills are next level graphic… and if you thought Art’s disturbingly sexist kill in the first film was bad in a leg-crossing way, well, he makes up for it as an equal opportunity offender (a certain Heathers line comes to mind… except it wasn’t gently). Legs will be crossed. Rages will be outed.

I’m happy Lauren LaVera is back as Sienna. I like where her fantastical storyline is going and she’s becoming a favorite Final Girl for me. She’s psychically wounded (and still has the facial scars to prove it) but she’s still strong and will take the fight to the slasher before even thinking about running.

Art is once again played by David Howard Thornton. He’s somehow the glue that makes watching his slasherific escapades tolerable. Because he’s just that good as a mime (pardon me… clown). His mannerisms remain funny though I was initially worried his “oh how funny… I cut your arm off” miming was the height of his mugging. But, no, they find other ways to get across his goofiness and it IS funny (in between being wrong in the exactly right kind of way).

The film starts to glue together the mythology they set up in the second film and I love that. The more fantastical, demonic, and angelic this franchise gets, the happier I am. And there’s very little doubt about what Art is and, by extension, Sienna. It’s just now a question of how far they are willing to take it… and I didn’t think they took it quite far enough this round. But hopefully that’s what Terrifier 4 delivers.

I didn’t like this flick as much as Terrifier 2 for three reasons. First, it’s not as big a surprise any longer… Terrifier 2 did all this first. Second, there’s a couple too many extraneous kills that don’t move the plot forward. And third, I didn’t like how it ended… it felt like they were setting up for an epic part 4 but they didn’t quite do the legwork. Plus the final moments with Art just felt pointless.

But, otherwise, it’s a pretty terrific, go-for-broke slasher that expands the mythology they are building. The gore is massively over-the-top and you should avoid it if that doesn’t appeal to you. I like a good splatter flick as long as it has meat on its bone (pardon the image) and Terrifier 2 and 3 have that. There’s more going on than just guts… though there’s plenty of that too.

Score: 87