AN UNHOLY WRECK

There are bad movies, and then there’s Terrifier 3, a festering pile of cinematic waste so atrocious that it’s not only the worst of the year but one of the worst I’ve ever had the displeasure of sitting through. Damien Leone couldn’t make a shittier movie if he tried. Hell, he may be a step above Tommy Wiseau (The Room) in terms of technical competence, but at least Wiseau’s ineptitude is unintentionally entertaining. Leone, on the other hand, is a talentless, unimaginative hack who has somehow managed to churn out this brain-dead drivel masquerading as a horror film.

There’s literally nothing of substance to write about because — spoiler alert — there’s no plot. The film stumbles from one absurd scene to the next without any semblance of narrative coherence. Every attempt to move the story forward is laughable at best and infuriating at worst. It’s as if Leone grabbed a handful of ideas out of a trash bin, threw them on the screen, and hoped something would stick. Spoiler alert: Nothing does. This is 125 minutes of meandering nonsense, dressed up in lazy jump scares and superficial shock value, with no sense of direction or pacing. You’ll spend the entire runtime wondering why you’re still sitting there.

And let’s talk about Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton), who was once at least a mildly interesting, menacing figure. In Terrifier 3, they gave him a sidekick. Yes, you heard that right. Because when a murderous clown isn’t working, why not give him an equally annoying companion in the form of Victoria Heyes, the stitched-up resurrection of the first film’s final girl. Her presence is supposed to add some new dynamic, but all it does is further strip away what little mystique Art had left. In fact, Art has become a hollow shell of his former self, a caricature of what made him remotely intriguing in the first place. There’s no mystique left — he’s just another tired, repetitive villain pulling the same tired tricks. He doesn’t scare, he doesn’t disturb, and worst of all, he doesn’t surprise. The clown has become a parody of himself, going through the motions in a predictable slog of pointless violence and soulless mischief. Art used to have teeth, now he’s gumming it.

Speaking of violence, it’s worth noting just how desperate this movie is to shock its audience. Terrifier 3 pushes its gore so hard, so relentlessly, that it reveals the cheapness beneath. The blood and guts feel less like a stylistic choice and more like a budget-saving trick. You can see the corners being cut, the shortcuts being taken. The over-the-top violence is meant to mask the film’s other glaring deficiencies, but all it does is highlight them. Every so-called “gruesome” scene is so stretched out and exaggerated that it crosses the line from grotesque to downright cartoonish. The fact that we’re supposed to be disturbed or impressed is laughable. If you’re going to rely on gore to carry a horror film, at least make it look good — or at the very least, give us a reason to care. But we don’t. The victims are bland, empty vessels we forget as soon as they’re introduced. The carnage holds zero weight because we’re given no reason to invest in these characters beyond their inevitable, meaningless slaughter.

Leone has no sense of pacing. Every scene lingers too long, every kill overstays its welcome. He doesn’t understand that the audience needs more than just buckets of blood. We need suspense, tension, character investment. But no, here we get nothing but empty spectacle, and not even good spectacle at that. It’s a hollow, soulless excuse for a film.

Fuck this thing. It blew. Terrifier 3 is a total failure — an irredeemable, mind-numbing experience that should be avoided at all costs.

stills courtesy Everett Collection / Cineverse