It’s been five years since Sienna Shaw went through the most horrendous night of her life.
She was literally tortured, torn open, murdered and then resurrected. She saw loved ones gruesomely mangled and eaten. She lopped off the head of a fiend: a white-painted harlequin with rotten licorice teeth. And in the end, she was locked up and drugged as she “recovered” from that psyche-pureeing ordeal.
So it’s no mystery that Sienna is still struggling emotionally as she leaves the psychiatric hospital to make her way to her aunt Jess’ home. Their house is decorated for the holidays. It’s warm and welcoming, the air is filled with Christmas songs. But still, Sienna is on edge.
The twentysomething young woman is seeing strange bloody visions, feeling all-too-familiar fears. Even her love-filled reconnection with her niece, Gabby, can’t dispel Sienna’s premonitions of dread. She knows that the killer clown is dead. She saw his decapitated body, the pooled blood and gore.
But … still.
The thing is, Sienna’s seemingly irrational anxiety isn’t unfounded. Because when a hellish killer and his demon-possessed helper face death, it’s never a permanent thing.
Even without a head, Art the Clown reanimated five years ago. And with dark spiritual assistance, it regained its toothy, mad-eyed noggin and its full murderous strength.
Then … it waited.
Now Art and the demon entity formerly known as Victoria Heyes have been nudged once more into celebrating the Christmas holidays in their own way. And their twinkle-light-lit slaughterhouse mayhem will yield twisted and debased holiday “joy.”
Sienna Shaw’s Christmas will definitely not be a silent night.
It’s obvious that Sienna cares deeply for her Aunt Jess, Uncle Greg, brother Jonathan and niece Gabby. And in their own ways, they’re each willing to put their lives on the line for one another. (But that self-sacrifice falls short in the face of pure evil.)
The dark, demonic spirituality behind Art and Victoria’s seeming immortality is never fully explained. But it’s implied that Art is completely invulnerable to permanent harm because of the demon that possesses Victoria’s one-eyed, rotting human body.
There’s also a counterpoint spiritual connection to Sienna that’s not explained either. In flashback, we see that Sienna’s dad gave her a sword when she was just a girl. He also painted a picture that suggests she will someday be an angelic warrior who will defend the innocent. (We see very brief moments from the previous movie of Sienna being magically resurrected because of that sword.) That “angelic power” is not, however, directly connected to God. And Sienna herself doesn’t appear to be a person of faith in any measurable way.
That said, this pic’s Christmas setting does open the door to flashes of religious imagery. We see crosses and other iconography in a chapel setting, for instance, as well as a painted rendition of Jesus and the Last Supper. There are also quick shots of snowy Nativity-scene displays and the like, as well as several Christmas carols (such as “Hark the Harold Angels Sing” and “Silent Night.”)
Sienna reads a letter from her brother that talks about her responsibility to take on and destroy a demon foe. And the movie also takes pains to snub its dramatic nose at faith in general, both through verbal slights and visual cues.
A man’s eviscerated corpse is nailed to a wall in a mockery of Jesus on the cross, for instance. And the demon-possessed Victoria constructs a crown of thorns that she jams down on Sienna’s head, declaring, “You’re no savior.” The demon also proclaims, “There is no hope, there is no God” as it attempts to force its way into Sienna’s soul/body. Etc.
Later, when Sienna tries to save someone in danger, she has to hold the blade of her sword, and it cuts through her palms. The gruesome wounds then magically heal. A seemingly magical passageway to hell opens beneath the feet of several characters, and they fall in.
Early on, we see a young mother dressed in midriff-baring shorts and T-shirt sleepwear. A young college couple makes out in one scene. And then, later the same young woman and her boyfriend engage in sexual motions while clothed and making out.
A shower scene involves sex between the same now-unclothed couple We see their steamy encounter through a smoked glass shower door and then up-close in profile. (Key body parts are just off-camera in this otherwise explicit scene.)
Two other scenes also include something of a blend between being slightly sexual and wholly grotesque. In one scene the demon-possessed Victoria has given birth to Art’s severed head. She sits on the floor, legs akimbo, as she reaches to bite through her umbilical cord.
In another instance, Victoria is apparently sexually stimulated by Art mutilating a fallen victim. The woman slips a large shard of glass beneath her skirt to masturbate with. (The resulting splashing gore is closely examined by the camera’s eye.)
[Editor’s Note: Unusually graphic violence is detailed in the following section.]
Terrifier 3 is, quite frankly, a protracted, bloody buffet of gruesomeness that wasn’t even given a rating by the MPAA. The flesh rending isn’t constant, but it’s grisly enough that the film becomes a difficult and disquieting slog through disembowelments and close examinations of, seemingly, every conceivable form of violent sadism.
We see legs, arms, hands and feet lopped off by axes and a chainsaw. Partially sawed limbs snap and are ripped off. Faces are mauled and torn. Horrible things happen to people’s scalps and skulls. And the torment stretches on from there.
Several examples of those agonizing instances focus on Art the Clown’s invented means of torture.
He uses a concocted, nitrous-oxide device to freeze a bound man’s legs and arms, for instance. He smashes those iced extremities with a hammer, turning them to ice chips and mush. He then moves on to the man’s face.
Art goes after a naked couple in a shower with a chainsaw. After disabling the man with strategically lopped limbs, he takes his time butchering the naked young woman while the camera looks on. And still more seriously horrific things happen involving this chainsaw and Art’s two naked and terribly vulnerable victims.
Art also hammers a large plastic tube down into a woman’s distended throat and then force-feeds her live rats before viciously slashing open her neck.
There’s more, including children brutally butchered just offscreen. And that’s still just the tip of the proverbial iceberg here.
Along with some 50 f-words and nearly 20 s-words, we hear multiple uses of “d–n,” “b–ch,” “h—” and “a–hole.” God and Jesus’s names are misused 25 times total (God being blended with “d–n” on one of those).
We see both Sienna and her brother Jonathan take prescription drugs in the heat of emotional distress. In Jonathan’s case, the drugs knock him out cold. Several men drink beer and shots of booze in a bar.
In addition to all the mess listed above there’s also a sense of filth and grossness throughout, including Art urinating on a store Santa’s lap and in other settings. Art also creepily caresses young children with gore-smeared hands.
Let me start this conclusion by assuming that you, dear reader, haven’t got a clue what a Terrifier movie is. Because, frankly, if you were familiar with or a fan of the franchise, I can’t imagine that you’d be wondering what Plugged In had to say about it.
For you curious few, then, let me offer a scrap of background info.
This Damien Leone-written and directed film series started in 2016 with a college project-looking pic that cost about $35,000 to make. But that first gore-fest entry caught the attention of a certain, uh, slice of the American public because of its copious onscreen slaughter and its demonic, mime-silent antagonist, Art the Clown. (Art is the kind of killer that can mime a laughing fit while brutally relishing every sadistic rip, chop and slice of his unfortunate victims.)
By the time the 2022 sequel came along—turning a $250,000 budget into a $15 million profit—the Terrifier films had taken on a cultish reputation as being “barely legal snuff films.”
Flick number three ups the budget, broadens the ongoing demonic story, adds children to its ghastly meatwork, and gives viewers all the more realistic, spill-those-entrails butchery. The pic also sets its action at Christmastime so that blasphemous taunts can be stitched into the process of tearing skin off a screaming victim. (Gotta keep upping the ante, don’t you know.)
In short, Terrifier 3 is grotesquely foul on every level and a torture all its own to simply watch for two hours.
So, I wouldn’t recommend that anyone even consider viewing this disgusting bucket of cinematic excrement. But in case someone brings the topic up around the watercooler, now you can tell them why.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
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