Damien Leone has found a way to make the greatest film for the Pagan Holiday season known as Christmas Time.
"Die Hard" eat your heart out, or Art might do it for you.
Whereas Michael Leavy's "Stream" was somewhat of a stumble for the Leone camp, the "Terrifier" team has been able to regain it's footing with the third edition of the "Terrifier" franchise.
I was in Birmingham, AL about a month ago and saw a Party City with an Art The Clown costume ad with some girl in it. I find it amazing to see just how far this series has grown from a short film.
This edition of Terrifier plays off most of the tricks from the second installment, audiences get treated to the guts and gore in all it's glory with some fresh kills as Art expands his targets to children and animals.
Liquid nitrogen, bombs, chainsaws, swords - as Art rummages through his plastic bag of pain, it's a wonder how this wasn't branded as a Christmas franchise before since Art has morphed from a serial killer to a magical djinn with a bag of tricks and boots to boot.
The cast borrows heavily from the second film as characters Sienna and Jonathan return.
Though it's only been two years since the last "Terrifier" was released, this joint has a five year time skip and there'a slight details like Sienna's scars from the last film's finale and Jonathan being aged up to now attending college than slickly coincide with this.
The film also includes the unintentional final girl from the first "Terrifier" film as Art's new possessed femme-lackey, that he seems to have picked up a penchant for since the last film.
The lore gets deeper as Art is now at a Freddy Kreuger level of demonic with a penchant of surviving death like Jason Vorhees.
It's great to see Art pop up during Christmas, because none of those aforementioned slashers would dare stay on screen past October 31st. Leone continues to break boundaries with this franchise, and I'd hate to see just because of it's gore laden content, Art miss out on an Oscar yet again.
Catherine Corcoran had a better breakdown seen as a character that was just a mirage than Channing Tatum did at the end of "Blink Twice". If he gets that Oscar, I can now think of a member of the "Terrifier" cast that deserves that golden statue more than him and she was in this film for less than a minute.
Some of the acting is still campy, rightfully to lighten the mood of such a rough film. But the family drama scenes got to be a bit too much where even I took a piss break when Jonathan inevitably got into a brother-sister battle of words with Sienna.
There was at least two scenes with Sienna's aunt that could have been left on the cutting room floor as well as some goofy monologue from the villian shenanigans to Sienna becoming nigh impregnable as the film hit it's final throes that could have been changed up to.
Though there was fat that needed to be trimmed, it was hard to concentrate on that with the smorgasboard of gore Art keeps throwing in the face of the audience while wearing the most obnoxious of grins.
This is the most extreme horror film I have ever seen, though it's nods to the camp in "Poltergeist", "Nightmare on Elm Street", and others make the sheer evil of "Terrifier 3" easy to overlook as it runs.
This film is so evil, if everytime it plays it opens a gate to hell, I would still buy another ticket to it.
Who knew Art would be the character to bring back some Christmas cheer in this dystopian Western world?
Joker, who?
