Terrifier 3

 Terrifier 2 expanded on the first movie in every conceivable way. A bigger budget can do wonders, as shown by that film's presentation, but no amount of money is worth anything if the people behind it don't have any ambition. That's not the case with Writer/director Damien Leone, who stepped up on his previous effort with a script that included likeable characters, a cool '80s-movie-adjacent fantasy plot (seriously, this movie's more fantastical elements feel like they belong airbrushed to the side of a van) and... more violence, more cruelty, and, well, I'd say more gore, but that doesn't even begin to cover the amounts of innards, shambles, offal, guts, viscera and other synonyms that Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) cheerfully throws around during the course of that movie. It's a fucking maximalist, peerless gorefest.

 So here we are, a couple of years later, with a sequel set during Christmas that somehow ups the ante on the grand guignol and on Art's antics, letting the rest recede a little bit into the background.

 The opening shows you just how terrific (and how vicious) these movies can be with a horrific, stand-alone yuletide home invasion shown from the point of view of a poor, doomed, innocent family who gets a visit from a suspiciously skinny and pasty white Santa Claus. With an axe. The segment is worth the price of admission alone and is a good showcase for Leone's considerable chops (ha!) for pacing and building a sense of dread. And, of course, for bloodshed.

 From there, the script gets a lot sloppier, bouncing back in time a little to explain what happened after the end of the previous film. First, a (very funny) interlude to show how Art put himself back together after being beheaded at the end of Terrifier 2. Then, an introduction to her sidekick Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi), back from the first Terrifier film. Her suffering at Art's hands left her a broken wreck, physically and mentally; After (literally) playing a role in the demonic clown's rebirth, she decides that she wants to be on the other end of a knife for once, helping him out on some of his grisly outings, providing running commentary all the time. There's a story reason for her inclusion which ties into the series' convoluted metaphysics, but honestly... it's kind of a mess.

 Once Art is fully back and on the warpath (a process that takes him five years), he decides to go after the other one that got away - and also decapitated him with a magical sword.
 Sienna (Lauren LaVera) has spent those five years in a mental institution. She's released to spend Christmas with her aunt (Margaret Anne Florence), uncle (Bryce Johnson) and adoring young cousin (Antonella Rose). Her trauma gets a lot of screentime, but while LaVera remains likeable and does a good job selling her internal turmoil, the dialog is a little too clunky. Serviceable, but not really effective.

 As Art circles around her and her newfound family, Sienna realizes something is up and tries to put up a resistance. It all leads to a sickeningly brutal final confrontation, and... sigh, an extremely unsatisfying cliffhanger. The script barely moves forward, plot-wise, and only develops the mythology a tiny bit - and not in a satisfying way*. The story here, like on many a modern Marvel or other franchise-minded movie, barely merits that name; Besides signalling that the series might get weirder, it's mostly padding. It works better as a series of murderous episodes, and the focus is firmly set on the bloodshed.
 

 It is some pretty damn good bloodshed, if I might say so. Faces are torn off, necks are slit, bowels are dissem'd. And that's just for starters. There's a grotesque creativity at work, and a sense of gleeful, over-the-top cruelty even before Art starts miming his stupid little jokes like the little shit he is; His lethality is only rivalled by his punchability.
 There's nothing as bad as poor Allie's torture from the last time around, but there are a lot more extended deaths, elaborate as all hell and realized with disturbing panache; It's no wonder that Tom Savini, patron saint of gorehounds, puts in an appearance. As in the previous movies, things are heightened enough (the sound design, particularly) that you can kind of have fun in between all the wincing... just about. There's some heavily sexualized violence (to both genders) but next to no nudity, which must have been a conscious decision - a strange one, given that we get to see loads of people with their skin off, never mind their clothes. In any case, that scene caused three walkouts at my screening (that I noticed).

 This is a nasty, nasty movie, ugly by design and calculated to get a deeply visceral reaction. Some of the targets of its violence are fair game as per the slasher genre's admittedly exaggerated rules, but most of them aren't. There's also a lot of black, black humour, most of it coming from Art. After killing a whole family at their home, for example, he takes the time to eat the cookies and milk they left for Santa. Or, in my favorite scene, the asshole finds a way to curdle the hospitality of a kindly soul in the foulest way possible. He really is the incarnation of the most hateful internet troll.

 Terrifier 3 is not exactly scary - it's a little too ghoulishly interested in its red, wet fireworks - but there's a lot of very effective suspense as the next gruesome death looms. And as a gnarly kill delivery engine, well... that's basically the film's raison d'etre, and it fully delivers. I prefer the second part's balance and tonal variety, but I have a lot of respect for a film that only cares about the bits that everyone fast forwards to in slashers upon a rewatch. Shame you may also need to do that here.

*:  We do at least find out that Art washes his hand after taking a piss. If he puts his shopping cart back with the other after doing his groceries, I think that effectively makes him a good person. At least according to some internet theories.

Terrifier 2

 At the end of Terrifier, Art the clown (spoilers!) comes back to life after shooting himself and goes after the mortician examining him. It's a surprising scene, as the movie had up to that point resolutely avoided any supernatural trappings (unless you count Art's tendency to pop up out of nowhere like Droopy Dog.)

 Terrifier 2 picks up from there, literally and figuratively. We get a continuation of that scene where our favorite clown goes to town on the poor mortician's face with a tiny medical hammer - teeth and blood flying everywhere. It's an impressive and disgusting bit of practical effects that easily tops anything from the first movie, and maybe unconsciously carries on the theme of undersized tools causing outsized damage (remember that time when Art cut a girl in half using a one-handed hacksaw?)

 In any case, the sequel rolls with that resurrection, turning Art into more of an otherworldly threat complete with a ghostly sidekick and his own clown-themed pseudo dimension over the course of the story. If the first movie was (in part by necessity) a grungy video-nasty-style slasher flick, Terrifier 2 is a bona fide horror extravaganza that doubles down on the nastiness from the first movie but adds likeable characters with an actual arc, fantasy elements, and some very funny pitch-black humor. It's a welcome return to All Hallow's Eve more eclectic horror offerings, and makes it (for me) a markedly more fun movie than its predecessor, even as it ramps up the gore and suffering.

 The bigger budget is very noticeable - not just in the effects, as the movie expands to more locations, manages much more dynamic shots and a wrangles a much larger cast to accommodate the more ambitious script.

 After a (very funny) bit of business where Art, who is still every bit the hateful asshole, goes to a laundromat to wash his blood-stained clown duds after a messy resurrection, the retrowave-drenched credits roll and we're introduced to our new protagonist.

 A full year has past since the Miles County Massacre. Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) is a young girl who's putting the finishing touches on a warrior angel costume which, we'll later learn, is based on a character her late father created for her. She lives with her mom (Sarah Voigt) and little brother (Elliott Fullam) and is preparing the costume for a Halloween party she plans to attend with her friends. 

 There's some real sweetness to their relationships, which immediately makes the stakes feel that much higher than with the thinly sketched bunch from the first movie. That night, as Sienna goes to sleep, Art appears in her dreams in what's easily the weakest element in the movie, a purposefully stilted dream sequence that is unimaginatively portrayed as some sort of kid's show. Oh well, at least it has some impressively chunky squibs going off once Art inevitably turns murderous...
 The flames from her dream spread to her real-life bedroom when she wakes, establishing that we're playing by Nightmare on Elm Street rules here, and that there's some sort of connection between Art and Sienna. Oops!

 Comparing notes, Sienna and her brother notice that her father had known about Art the clown even before he went on his rampage. There are some shards of a mythology strewn throughout the movie, enough to allow you to draw some conclusions, but it's all left incomplete and mysterious; I can get behind that. There's room for sequels to explain things to death, but I like this more indirect approach.

 The body count starts mounting on the following day. Sienna and her brother have run-ins with Art in town, who's having a busy day of butchering random people while he's not harassing the Shaw family: This includes one of Sienna's friends (Casey Hartnett) in a scene that's almost as sexualized, and way more disturbing that the scene that had everyone in a tizzy from the first Terrifier. There's a terrific joke in there that got a huge laugh out of me, and immediately made me feel a bit guilty about it. Top marks! And if the misogyny worries you, don't worry. The movie's response to being charged with sexualized violence is to basically double down on it, and then add a scene with a dude (Charlie McElveen) getting his own sexualized and very nasty dose of ultraviolence.

 Events escalate, as they are wont to do, and it all builds up to a satisfying (and satisfyingly over-the-top) climax at an abandoned carnival. There's also a hilariously bizarre mid-credits setup for the now-inevitable sequel.

  So... yeah, if you couldn't tell by now, I liked this one a lot. It's a batshit insane movie in all the best ways, showing commendable ambition and craftmanship, and reclaiming extreme gore from the more dour horror movies that have been the norm since the early 00's.

 The only thing keeping me from loving it, besides the dream sequence, is that it's a bit too self-indulgent, there's a bit too much flab. Not as much as on recent too-long movies, but by the end I was getting a tiny bit impatient.

 Still, I'm very happy it's been so successful; Here's hoping we get to cheerfully discuss in a decade whether the Terrifier series jumped the shark at Seed of Terrifier or on Terri Firmer.

Terrifier

 Terrifier's a nasty, no-nonsense slasher with gruesome, drawn-out kills. Running a lean eighty-four minutes, there's just enough scene setting for the cat and mouse games that will ensue as two friends and a handful of bystanders are stranded in an abandoned building with a killer clown, to be picked off one by one.

 Besides the uncompromising tone and excellent gore effects, the movie has a not-so-hidden ace in its villain Art the (killer) clown (David Howard Thonton). Writer/director Damien Leone reused him from his earlier anthology movie All Hallows Eve (an equally nasty and fun compilation of stories assembled from earlier shorts tied off with a wrapper story, released back in 2013), and he's a great psycho: distinctive, assholish, and channeling that mime energy in a way that's eminently punchable; Very memorable.

 First introduced here applying clownface and working on his implements of torture (in a very 2000s-style horror scene, complete with alternative-rock soundtrack), Art never utters a word, choosing to communicate by mugging, pantomime, and stabbing. He toys with people, annoying and pushing buttons with lame humor before the knives come out... just an all-round hateful piece of shit. 

 Art the Clown is of a piece with a dark, comedic energy that runs throughout Terrifier, and helps keep it separate from the more joyless extreme horror movies of the last couple of decades. The kills are very gruesome and at least one of them, a bit of heavily sexualized violence, gets pretty uncomfortable, but they're also ridiculously over the top and Art's constant mugging helps keep a distance. Things are unpleasant enough to give this unapologetic horror movie a healthy dose of queasiness, but they also don't really feel like a wallow though misery - more like an accomplished team of craftsmen showing some justified pride in the work they've accomplished with latex and red food coloring; If they can gross you out, all the better.

 Terrifier feels doomed to be praised with qualifiers (it's good for what it is!) mainly because despite some agreeable weirdness, the story doesn't really surprise at any point - it saves all of its energy for its inventive death scenes. The script does a better job than expected of balancing the carnage with some tension building, reversals and narrow escapes, but the two-dimensional characters coupled with game but sometimes amateurish performances don't really get you to invest in anyone's fate.
 The low-budget friendly derelict building in which the bulk of the movie is set isn't that interesting to look at either, and there's no clear sense of geography to it; characters just run into each other (or the remains thereof) seemingly at random. The cinematography is serviceable, and I did like how the stark blacks of digital video bleed into the black in Art's monochromatic clown suit.

  It's a fun, unpretentious movie done in a way that seems unfashionable these days, where there's an unspoken rule that nastiness needs to be about something to justify itself  Sometimes nasty is all there is, innit? And anyhow, it's way better and more entertaining than a no-budget killer clown movie had any right to be.