Ter­ri­fi­er 3 review – deck the halls with small intestines

Through the cur­rent schism between the acolytes of ​“ele­vat­ed hor­ror” — their crests designed with con­spic­u­ous­ly arty sym­me­try, adorned with over­ly insis­tent sym­bols, and ban­nered with Latin mot­tos about trau­ma — and the forces of a de fac­to ​“low­ered hor­ror,” the vul­gar­i­ans have found their great­est cham­pi­on in the mute muti­la­tor Art the Clown. In his con­cep­tion as an anony­mous, ele­men­tal force of mer­ri­ly mean­ing­less vio­lence equal parts Michael Myers and Tom Cat, in his indus­try stand­ing as the mas­cot of a rare bona fide cult phe­nom­e­non slather­ing gore all over the walls of small­town cine­plex­es for over three hours at a time, and now, in his tar­get­ing of the kitsch trea­sure trove that is Christ­mas with the splen­did spleen-squelch­er Ter­ri­fi­er 3, Art mounts a glo­ri­ous­ly grotesque coun­terof­fen­sive against the poseurs and their po-faced faux-pro­fun­di­ty threat­en­ing to ster­il­ize his genre. Cre­ator Damien Leone applies a chain­saw to the taint of good taste, split­ting it right down the mid­dle until every last iota of respectabil­i­ty has been hem­or­rhaged away.

Ter­ri­fi­er 2 tow­ered above the man­gled corpses of its com­pe­ti­tion by indulging its own sick fetish­es to the point of exper­i­men­tal­ism, fol­low­ing the cadences of drone met­al in its lengthy, near-sur­re­al tor­rents of unspar­ing bru­tal­i­ty. At its best, the orgy of blood­let­ting induced the same unholy trance state as Uni­ver­sal Sol­dier: Day of Reck­on­ing, a film that now lends Ter­ri­fi­er 3 its open­ing sal­vo of fam­i­ly anni­hi­la­tion. And that’s only the begin­ning in a prac­ti­cal-effects extrav­a­gan­za includ­ing mul­ti­ple skulls treat­ed as piñatas, some fun with liq­uid nitro­gen, and an excep­tion­al­ly cre­ative engi­neer­ing solu­tion to the ques­tion of how to get a liv­ing rat into the oesoph­a­gus of a liv­ing woman. Some pre-release fuss was raised over Art the Clown’s will­ing­ness to mur­der lit­tle kids, pre­sum­ably by peo­ple who can­not tell the dif­fer­ence between real life and onscreen make-believe, but this tran­spires out of frame as if to earn a ​“No Child Actors Were Trau­ma­tized in the Mak­ing of This Movie” disclaimer.

The third instal­ment faces the unique chal­lenge of con­tend­ing with the franchise’s own pop­u­lar­i­ty, as Leone’s first work pro­duced in the knowl­edge that he had some­thing like a hit on his hands. (Though slight­ly less evil than Col­in Jost, Art the Clown can like­wise be found palling around with Pete David­son.) A pair of meta-flour­ish­es deal a gris­ly fate to fans of Art, but Leone’s prox­im­i­ty to suc­cess comes through more per­cep­ti­bly in the call­ing-card aspi­ra­tions of a film with struc­ture and the­mat­ic con­cerns clos­er to nor­mal­cy than its pre­de­ces­sors. When not occu­pied with tri­als of the human body’s ten­sile strength, the action rejoins pre­vi­ous final girl Sien­na Shaw (Lau­ren LaV­era) as she con­va­lesces at her aunt and uncle’s place, her lumpy Hal­loween Kills-style pro­cess­ing of night­mares past enlivened only by the occa­sion­al schiz­o­phrenic hal­lu­ci­na­tion. The fix­a­tion on con­ti­nu­ity and the atten­dant sketchy log­ic of the super­nat­ur­al has become the series’ Achilles heel, its last teth­er to a more pedes­tri­an class of horror.

Leone would rather place him­self in line with the clas­sics, trad­ing The Exorcist’s cru­ci­fix-as-dil­do for a shard of glass, and Psycho’s show­er cur­tain for a glass pane. (A cameo from SFX leg­end Tom Savi­ni con­tin­ues trac­ing this lin­eage into the ​‘80s, as do the Panav­i­sion anamor­phic lens­es select­ed for the touch of Car­pen­ter lent to shots with rich­er col­or, tex­ture, and light con­trast than most cur­rent points of com­par­i­son.) Though it’s not like he’s in any dan­ger of join­ing their ranks; the script real­ly sings in its weird­er, off-key moments, like a sum­mar­i­ly-dis­patched Clint Howard mus­ing ​“My wife’s dead!” or Sien­na yelling ​“How’d you know I don’t like cere­al?” at her lit­tle cousin.

The film prof­fers plen­ty of fun­ny gifts along these lines, fore­most among them a writ­ten-for-the-film Christ­mas tune rival­ing the Mup­pet Christ­mas Carol’s gold stan­dard, but the real rea­son for the sea­son is the sim­ple, hon­est lust for car­nage. There’s some­thing curi­ous and pure about the way Leone dis­as­sem­bles bod­ies, like a child break­ing open an old VCR not to see how it works, but to sur­vey and play with the com­pli­cat­ed stuff inside. At the din­ner table, Sienna’s mop­pet niece glee­ful­ly recalls her own injury from a bicy­cle acci­dent: ​“There was so much blood, and this piece of fat ooz­ing out!” Sien­na blanch­es, but the inno­cent babe just thinks it’s neat.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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