Terrifier 3 shocked and delighted viewers at its Fantastic Fest world premiere with fans dubbing it the ‘most disgusting, gory, vile’ film of the trilogy.
Damien Leone’s deranged horror franchise – which began with 2008 short film The 9th Circle – introduced the world to monochrome menace Art the Clown who has hacked and slashed his way across the fictional Miles County.
Following anthology horror All Hallows Eve, the first Terrifier film was released in 2016 and followed by its 2022 sequel which gained worldwide attention thanks to its gratuitous gore which made people vomit and even faint during screenings.
For the third film, Christmas has arrived in Miles County and Art (David Howard Thornton) is back after traumatising and brutalising Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera), one of the only people to survive Art’s attacks.
Struggling to cope with the events of the previous film, Sienna’s life is turned upside down when a fresh batch of slayings shatter the town’s holiday spirit.
Terrifier 3 had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest last night, with fans expressing how the ‘outrageous’ sequel is Leone’s most gory yet.
‘Terrifier 3. Well, holy f**k. Damien Leone just painted his Sistine Chapel on the screen with blood and guts. Lauren LaVera slays. Merry #FantasticFest 🎄,” Preston Barta wrote on X.
James Preston Poole warned: ‘Terrifier 3 pushes the envelope so far it’s bound to cause some outrage.’
In a separate post, he raved: ‘Terrifier 3 is truly evil. And I mean that in the best possible way.
‘Grindhouse beyond Grindhouse. Truly sickening practical effects mixed with a lore that is getting more and more intricate. I don’t know how Damien Leone tops this. Lauren LaVera THEE final girl.’
Germain Lussier admitted: ‘Terrifier 3 was, without question, the most disgusting, gory, vile thing I’ve ever seen. I kind of enjoyed it?’
Many audience members stressed how ‘brutal’ and ‘depraved’ the latest Terrifier film is – but how much they loved the shock factor.
‘Terrifier 3 is some absolutely depraved sicko s**t (complimentary). The movie looks AMAZING (2 split diopters!), @LaurenLaVera has an all-timer final girl sequence, and David Howard Thornton absolutely rocks as Art the Clown once again. More lore!!!,’ Alex Papaioannou wrote.
Leone recently revealed that he was approached by studios to reboot the horror series for a wider audience, but declined the offer as he would need to make them far less gory.
‘They wanted to reboot it for a wider audience. That’s not what I was interested in. They would say, “It’s gotta be rated R, it can’t be as gory as you made it,”‘ he told Total Film.
‘I knew they’d never let me shoot the first 10 minutes of what I wanted to do [in Terrifier 3],’ he continued. ‘So I thought, “Let’s just stay true to what this franchise is.”‘