The ‘Terrifier’ franchise has been a fascinating industry story, a series of extremely low-budget and ridiculously gory horror films that prove that not every genre fan wants ‘elevated horror’. Sometimes you just want a splashy party, and Damien Leone undeniably delivers, trying to top his own carnage with each gruesome murder while gleefully reveling in the fact that people have reportedly puked and/or fainted at screenings. There are aspects of these films that are impressive, particularly the poor make-up effects and an underrated physical performance from David Howard Thornton, but “Terrifier 3” feels at best like a sideways move after the remarkable improvement in filmmaking from the first to the second chapter. . Leone continues to grow as a filmmaker – and there’s something interesting about seeing how that unfolds over the course of the franchise – but his screenwriting continues to let him down, mixing up his concepts with shallow mythology, atrocious dialogue and ridiculous filler that leads to another movie. in this series lasts more than two hours. I’m still hoping Leone will figure it out, but that’s not in here.

The best idea Leone had when producing “Terrifier 3” was to set it around Christmas, allowing the filmmaker to play with the iconography of the time, including placing the murderous Art the Clown (Thornton) in a Santa suit for most of his life. disaster. Leone’s playfulness with holiday scenes and his subversion of religious imagery feels like something a smarter screenwriter could really use for greater impact, but even if it only scratches the surface here, it produces some striking images: a Santa Claus brandishing a chainsaw and wearing sunglasses. clown makeup is sure to hold your attention.

“Terrifier 3” picks up after the last film’s ridiculous ending, in which the scarred Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi) literally gave birth to Art’s severed head. Don’t ask. One of the things I liked about the second chapter was how it delved into the surreal and supernatural, realizing that this kind of thing plays better as a nightmare than as a movie where all the plot points have to be connected. So are we supposed to understand how Art gets his head reattached to his body? Not really. He just does that.

Art and Victoria take shelter in an abandoned house, while final girl Sienna (Lauren LaVera) tries to deal with the trauma caused by the last film. She returns from a psychiatric hospital to live with her Aunt Jessica (Margaret Ann Florence), her husband Greg (Bryce Johnson) and their child Gabbie (Antonella Rose), who is clearly in this film to be endangered (or maybe that should be “Art’s way.”) Sienna’s brother Jonathan (Elliot Fullam) is in college and dealing with his own PTSD, but this too is just an excuse for more victims so Art can be skinned alive. To say that the plot in “Terrifier 3” is thin would be an understatement, and yet there is so much of it. Scene after scene of Sienna talking about her trauma unfolds in a way that I think is almost designed to make you desperate for another atrocity from Art the Clown just to ease the boredom.

And cruel they are. Much has been made of the murder scenes in “Terrifier 3” and how blatantly they try to push the boundaries of taste more than even the first two controversial films. They’re so over-the-top ridiculous in their design and execution that I don’t really take them seriously, but I wouldn’t really argue with anyone who is offended by a movie that’s willing to go where it does, which it doesn’t. only to mutilation and torture, but beyond the limits that even most horror fans maintain, including the death of children.

So why not write off “Terrifier 3” altogether? Two reasons: first, the DIY aspect of the film reminds me of genre films I loved when I first discovered the genre, and one of the reasons I still love horror: it’s not gatekeeper like other genres, allowing anyone with the right passion to make a movie like this for reportedly less than $2 million, an amount that will exceed profits before school lets out on Friday. Secondly, Thornton is phenomenal and gives a very physical performance that is more reminiscent of silent comedy than modern horror. (And adding Victoria to chat reduces the tension of the silent killer in this movie. Don’t do that again for the fourth movie, Sergio.) So while Leone and his maniacal alter ego still have some work to do, especially in the writing department, I keep searching for “Terrifier” to find out. After all, everyone loves a clown.