The clown is back in the cinema and is slaughtering his way across the big screen more brutally than ever in Terrifier 3. In doing so, he makes the same mistake as Saw, Conjuring, Halloween and many more.
With a budget of only $35,000, Terrifier 2016 caused a sensation among hardcore horror fans. Above all because of the violent escapades of the evil killer clown Art. Over the years, the independent slasher film became a financial success, and it was the home video sales that helped finance Terrifier 2. It was a financial success and led to the franchise’s breakthrough in 2022.
The obligatory sequel Terrifier 3 was released just two years later. Although I’m not the biggest fan of the series, the fearsome killer clown Art in parts 1 and 2 was able to captivate even me with his charisma and extreme toughness.
But when I went to see Terrifier 3 at the cinema, it quickly became clear that the franchise is treading water in part 3 and the once surprising violence has become boring to me. Director Damien Leone’s attempt to top his own violent excesses is at the expense of any build-up of tension. This is reminiscent of the mistakes of many previous horror franchises like Saw or Halloween, which sooner or later ended up in a downward spiral in terms of quality.
Terrifier 3 suffers from a lack of ideas: bigger, harder, without the element of surprise
The third part is very similar to its predecessor in terms of content. After a really strong opening sequence, it begins like Terrifier 2 with the revival of the killer, before the clown goes back to work with his garbage bag full of weapons. The only difference: instead of Halloween, it is now Christmas and the clown costume is replaced by the red coat of a Santa Claus.
Originality is also in vain with all the characters. The siblings Shaw (Lauren LaVera and Elliott Fullam) are the great antagonists of the killer clown Art and remain as pale and uninteresting as in the prequel. And the new killer sidekick Vicky (Samantha Scaffidi), a surviving victim of the killer from the first film, is nothing more than an uninspired copy of Amanda Young from the Saw films.
I have already criticized Terrifier 2 for having a tired plot. However, that film still benefited greatly from its enormous viral surprise effect. When it was released in US cinemas, recordings of the ultra-brutal violence went viral on platforms like TikTok and X (formerly Twitter). Together with reports of audience members vomiting, these clips created a social media hype that contributed to the film’s worldwide success.
With a budget of approximately $250,000, Part 2 was able to increase that of the first part almost ninefold. The financial upgrade did the franchise good and created a framework for increased dramatic impact, which the first part simply lacked. The cast was more talented and there was more money for the effects. That was enough to entertain me in Terrifier 2. Terrifier 3 doesn’t do that.
Terrifier 3 lacks this element of surprise and the qualitative improvement. Leone relies only on brutality. The increased budget is not an improvement as it was for the predecessor. Terrifier 2 was already excessive with its 140 minutes. However, the 125 minutes of the third part feel even longer due to the lack of content.
Terrifier 3 is predictably the most brutal horror film of the year. The endless loop of violence gets old very quickly. The once entertaining harshness of the franchise is now its undoing. Terrifier 3 stirs up unpleasant memories of many other horror sequels in me.
Nerviges Sequel-Problem: Terrifier 3 kopiert den Vorgänger und ist nur noch brutal
Dass Fortsetzungen vom Aufbau her ihren Vorgängern zu sehr ähneln, gibt es nicht nur beim Horror. Doch gerade dort macht es sich aufgrund der geringeren Budgets und limitierten Schauwerte gravierender bemerkbar. In the successful Conjuring films, the simple escalation from the first to the second part was fun, but it became redundant with the third part and the countless spin-offs. I felt the same way about the Insidious sequels and their bland copying of the recipe for success.
In series like Terrifier, where the violence is in the foreground, the qualitative decline is even more noticeable. Here, there is no longer any attempt to convince the audience with atmosphere or horror. The well-known and ultra-brutal torture porn series Saw or Hostel have already screwed that up: the story is becoming more and more silly and confusing. The build-up of tension fades into the background and gives way to endless bloodbath.
In the third part, Terrifier director Leone even shows how it could actually be done. But he doesn’t follow through with it. The film starts with a ten-minute sequence in which we follow an attack on a family from the perspective of the victims. Here I could still sympathize with the characters and fear the first appearance of the clown. But this fear was dispelled at the latest by the third bloodbath of the crazed killer. In doing so, Leone comes up with nothing better than even more misogynistic scenarios and children as victims for the greatest possible shock effect.
This trend of attrition was particularly bitter to follow in the most recent Halloween remake trilogy (Halloween, Halloween Kills, Halloween Ends) by David Gordon Green. The more we were confronted with the killer Michael Myers, the faster he lost all his horror and appeal. This is further reinforced in Terrifier 3 by all attempts to give the killer clown more background. This demystifies him and even the good presence of art performer David Howard Thornton does not help.
The saddest thing about it is that success usually proves the formulaic approach to horror series right. Film series such as Conjuring and Saw now have nine and ten entries respectively, which rarely offered anything new but reliably made the box office ring. In some countries, Terrifier 3 has already been released on October 11 and has already tripled the box office takings of its predecessor. Two more sequels are in the works.
