By KEN MICHAELS

Starring Lauren LaVera, David Howard Thornton and Antonella Rose
Written and directed by Damien Leone
Cineverse

In the opening scene of TERRIFIER 3, a little girl thinks she spies Santa Claus paying her home a visit on a night before Christmas. We know, of course, that it’s actually the evil Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) in jolly red disguise. We also know that, this being a TERRIFIER movie, young kids are in no way safe from becoming victims of Art’s rampage. And writer/director Damien Leone knows that we know it, teasing us with the possibility–nay, certainty–of a horrible fate befalling that child and her family.

It’s hardly a spoiler to reveal that Art indeed does dreadful things to the house’s occupants, and that they’re presented in the most protracted, blood-gushing manner possible. By now, even folks who aren’t horror fans are probably aware that TERRIFER’s stock in trade is the sickest, most brutal onscreen murders Leone can think up and stage, and this prologue delivers for the franchise’s devotees right away. Leone is not a believer in making his followers wait, and it’s undoubtedly not a coincidence that the Yuletide standard that plays on the soundtrack at the sequence’s close is “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”

The TERRIFIER movies, especially this one, are for genre buffs who believe that THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE would have been better if one of its male victims had been fully nude and screaming in agony for several minutes as his body parts, including his dick and balls, were chewed up into mulch on camera. (Under these holiday-themed circumstances, I’m surprised Leone didn’t name this character Chet, so he could follow up with a shot of Chet’s nuts roasting on an open fire.) There has always been a cruel, sadistic edge to the carnage in these films, and in TERRIFIER 3 that ante is upped to the point where, for this viewer at least, it stopped being fun. The defense has often been that the violence is so over-the-top that it becomes impossible to take seriously, but while the presentation is certainly extreme, the particulars, from the details of the bodily damage to the victims’ suffering and pleas for mercy, are played very much for realism. (Taking over for Leone on prosthetics-and-gore duties this time is Christien Tinsley, whose most pertinent past credit is THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST.)

The one black-comedic element that really works is, as always, Thornton’s performance as the unstoppable Art. He has perfected his brand of hideous pantomime with this role, and it’s on full display once again in TERRIFIER 3. In some ways he’s the heir apparent to Freddy Krueger’s throne, only he’s far more vicious and his morbid humor is derived not from one-liners but a series of finely wrought gestures that make it clear Art is having a high old time slicing and dicing his way through Miles County. (His reactions as he listens in on a conversation about him are a highlight here.) Once again, his principal target is Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera), who, five years after the previous movie’s events, is being released from the Sunny Valley Treatment Center. She goes to live with her uncle Greg (Bryce Johnson), aunt Jessica (Margaret Anne Florence) and tween niece Gabbie (Antonella Rose) as she tries to put her terrible past with Art behind her.

But she can’t get the demonic clown out of her head, or visions of her dead, accusatory friends. Meanwhile, her brother and fellow survivor Jonathan (Elliott Fullam, looking about two feet taller than he did last time) is also attempting to move forward as a college freshman. But that’s hard to do when Mia (Alexa Blair), girlfriend of his roommate Cole (Mason Mecartea), is a true-crime fanatic and podcaster who thinks that the only thing cooler than having Jonathan on her show would be a face-to-face with Art himself. (Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t dig into serial-killer worship in any depth; this is just a bit of easy be-careful-what-you-wish-for foreshadowing.)

Meanwhile, Art is busy resurrecting in a series of scenes that effectively venture into playfully grisly/surreal territory. Looking gaunter than before, he’s joined by former victim turned henchghoul Victoria, played by Samantha Scaffidi, made up to resemble a Lucio Fulci zombie. This is one of a few homages to previous frightful favorites scattered throughout TERRIFIER 3; one image combines visual callbacks to THE AMITYVILLE HORROR and BLACK CHRISTMAS. Once Art is fully reanimated, however, his homicidal activities go far beyond any past slasher flicks I can think of on the old gore-o-meter. He’s as nasty as he, and Leone, and his fans want him to be, and you can’t argue that TERRIFIER 3 doesn’t give those people what they want.

But it’s telling that past classics that did achieve similar stratospheric heights of splatter–DAWN OF THE DEAD, THE EVIL DEAD, DEAD ALIVE–inflicted the bulk of their atrocities on people who were either undead or possessed, having lost their humanity. Watching living, breathing people shrieking and crying as they’re dismembered or (somehow) worse–and staying alive and conscious longer than would likely be possible, just so they can shriek and cry some more–ultimately becomes, to these eyes, punishing and wearying rather than scary, or enjoyable as macabre entertainment. There’s no doubt that Leone and his team have a passion and commitment to what they’re doing, and their franchise bespeaks a much higher level of craft and accomplishment than, say, that “Poohniverse” junk. And Thornton’s horror-hall-of-fame portrayal is complemented by LaVera’s compelling encore as the tormented yet resilient Sienna. Yet by the time one of the characters is screaming at Art, “You cruel fuck, she’s just a baby, leave her alone!” it’s hard not to feel that could be directed at Leone as well.