Terrifier 3 – 2024

Terrifier 3 was a very anticipated film for me. The first two movies were such effective splatter-horror movies. They used the element of humor but was still pretty terrifying. I had high hopes for the third part, to say the least. And believe me, it’s brutal! But it also doesn’t make any sense. In the two first movies, there was still a believable story. There was something more than just gore- and splatter scenes.  In this third movie, I miss that completely. It seems like Damien Leone has taken the path to show that less is indeed not more – more in more. I disagree!

Don’t misunderstand me. The gore scenes look great, and there are many of them. They are over-the-top most of the time and that is fine. But they’re not connected to each other. There’s no clear main thread in Terrifier 3 as it were in the previous two movies. To me, it feels like loosely put-together gore scenes which happens to use the same characters in most of the scenes. Of course, Art the Clown is a main character, otherwise it wouldn’t be a Terrifier movie. However, there is also a focus on the victims being kind of the same throughout the movie. It’s not like the same person is killed over and over again but there is something to keep it all together, still, it’s very fragmented.

Continuation

It is a continuation of sorts from the previous film – Terrifier 2. But Terrifier 3 isn’t able to live up to its’ predecessors. in violence and gore – absolutely. But there’s only that, no really terrifying atmosphere, and to me the storyline, although not told in linear order, is a mess. It doesn’t make any sense. I get that you need to have the previous film in mind when seeing the third film, but I shouldn’t need to go back to the second part to “get it”. It could’ve been so much smarter told.

I’m disappointed. I mean, I love gore and great effects as much as the next guy but this was a failure to me. I found myself being annoyed by the loosely connected scenes and that I didn’t understand the timeline. To me, it’s not possible to connect the dots without committing to a grand paradox. But maybe that is the purpose here. But nevertheless, I didn’t get it even it if is funny and entertaining as well.