The Terrifier Trilogy is an Underrated Horror Classic
Art the Clown from the Terrifier franchise(hollywoodreporter.com).
November 15, 2024
Zach Myers, Editor
Warning: Descriptions may be disturbing
When people think of horror movies to watch, especially in October, there are a few choices that may come to mind. These may include the Halloween movies, IT, Silence Of The Lambs, etc. One trilogy that doesn’t seem to be gaining much attention is the Terrifier trilogy. Unlike other horror movies where it is either suspenseful or a gore fest, the Terrifier movies bring a good combination of both.
Terrifier 1 is set in Miles County, New York and introduces us to Art The Clown, played by David Howard Thornton. Art decides on Halloween night to go on a murderous rampage throughout the town, holding no punches in his brutality and viciousness in his attacks. The main protagonists that Art tries to hunt down are Tara Hayes (played by Jenna Kanell) and Dawn (played by Catherine Corcoran). Art stops at nothing in his pursuit of them. It starts at a local pizza shop, where after the two girls left prior to seeing Art, he brutally kills and decapitates the two workers, and sets their heads on fire. After leaving the pizza shop, Tara and Dawn call Tara’s sister Victoria (played by Samantha Scaffidi) to pick them up after their car tires were slashed (coincidence?). The two girls end up at a warehouse style apartment building where Tara asks to use the bathroom. Dawn ends up staying in the car and hears over the radio about the massacre at the pizza shop they were just at. Conveniently, Art shows up at her window and takes her into the basement of the warehouse. As Tara walks around the house, unknowing of her impending fate, she is chased around by Art. Despite repeatedly shooting, stabbing and hitting him, he captures her. She awakes from being knocked unconscious taped to a chair, and Dawn is hung from the ceiling with chains. I can’t describe this scene any further because it is extremely disturbing, and I can say the same for the rest of the movie. Eventually Tara is killed and her sister shows up and becomes the target of Art’s brutality. After being bloodied by Art, Victoria ends up in a garage space with Art where she gets run over and mutilated by him in a truck. Victoria miraculously survives her onslaught and ends up disfigured while Art seemingly dies after being shot by the police. But all is not what it seems…
Terrifier 2 is set after the Miles County Massacre. After everyone from the massacre is sent to the morgue and the doctor starts his multiple autopsies, one body comes alive… and it's Art the Clown. He escapes the morgue and returns to Miles County to find a new target for his murderous wrath. His target falls on the Shaw family, namely Sienna Shaw (played by Lauren LaVera) and her brother Jonathan (played by Elliott Fulham). Jonathan has been fantasizing about Art the Clown, as he has many drawings in his bedroom of him and listens to radio interviews about the Miles County Massacre, all to the dismay of his mother (played by Casey Harnett). With Sienna dealing with her brother’s wild antics and her own conflicts with her mother, she tries to have a good time on Halloween, and goes to a party with her friend Brooke (played by Kailey Hyman) and her boyfriend Jeff (played by Charlie McElveen). Despite Sienna trying to have fun, she sporadically sees Art the Clown throughout the night, terrifying her and sending her into a panic and annoying the “friends” she came with. Sienna eventually rushes home only to find something horrifying: her mother has been shot and decapitated and Jonathan is missing. In the time before coming home, Art had broken into the home, killed Sienna’s mom, knocked Jonathan unconscious and kidnapped him. Art is also able to manipulate Sienna and her friends into coming to a defunct amusement park ride called “The Terrifier” (ironic) using Jonathan’s phone. After arriving, Sienna walks into the ride in order to find her brother, but in doing so, she walks right into Arts trap. It starts when Jonathan gets out of the car to pee and Art jumps and kills him, notably going for his “nether” region. Brooke freaks out and tries to escape, but then she becomes the target of Art, stabbing and slashing her as she escapes into the Terrifier. Brooke meets her end in a mental hospital style room, where she is sprayed with acid and bashed to death with a spiked bat by Art. When Sienna discovers the bloodshed, another half of her mind opens up to revenge on Art, multiplied tenfold when Art slashes at her brother Jonathan. After having a near-death out of body experience, Sienna channels her rage and stabs Art in the neck decapitating him, with her and Jonathan being able to escape with their lives.
I put a warning before I started talking about the first two movies that the descriptions may be disturbing but to talk about the third Terrifier movie requires an extra layer of warning. This movie is by far the most disturbing and heart wrenching of any of these movies due to its overwhelming use of murder and bloodshed, so if this may be too much for you, stop reading this article.
The opening scene of Terrifier 3 is Art, dressed as Santa Claus, massacring an entire family. This scene is mainly a footnote into a movie, as it sets in stone that Art cannot be stopped and sets the central theme for the movie. Since their encounter with Art, Sienna has been in a mental hospital for her trauma while Jonathan has been studying at college. Sienna is coming to the home of her aunt Jess (played by Margaret Anne Florence) and uncle Michael (played by Jason Petric) during the holidays in order to revive her goodwill towards her life. She is most excited about seeing her little cousin Gabbie (played by Antonella Rose) who has such a free spirit about her and idolizes Sienna. Despite her trying to forget about what has happened, Sienna keeps seeing flashbacks to the events of years ago, namely of her lost friend, Brooke, in her mutilated state. To try and get her mind off things, Gabbie convinces Sienna to go Christmas shopping at a mall. Throughout the time they are looking at clothes, Sienna is convinced she sees Art dressed like Santa. Sadly, her prediction would come true. Art replaces the regular mall Santa after he takes a break, and Art starts handing out presents to children before their parents pull them away. Despite their mother trying to pull them away, there is one child who opens a final present that ends up exploding due to it being a makeshift bomb. Five people end up dying and six injured, and I think we can all tell who committed the atrocity. This causes Sienna’s anxiety to intensify tenfold, and she immediately goes to Jonathan’s college in order to warn him about the target they have on their back. While he thinks that they should up and leave town, Sienna wants to confront Art and figure out his plan for the two of them. It ends up being settled that Sienna will stay with Gabbie and aunt Jess while Michael will go pick up Jonathan from a college house party that his roommate invited him to. Art, though, always has a sense for the plans they make as he stops at the college party Jonathan is attending. Before his wrath turns to Jonathan, he enters the showers in the home, and brutally murders his roommate Burke (played by Chris Jerico) and his girlfriend Mia (played by Alexa Blair Robertson) who happens to run a true crime podcast that wanted to cover the Miles County Massacre. The shower scene is one of the more notable ones in the movie due to the brutality of the kill and Art’s prolonged torture of Burke in particular. Back at Sienna’s house, everyone is unaware of the events that have just taken place, but they would be soon hit with a hard reality check. In a tribute to the most famous scene from the first Terrifier movie, Sienna and her aunt are taped to chairs by Art and a possessed version of one of his first targets, Victoria. The torture for both of them is amplified when Victoria holds Sienna’s cousin Gabbie at knifepoint just for thrills and in order to get one of them to break. Aunt Jess is the first to fall as her screaming to let Gabbie go and proceeding to spit on the clowns cause them to kill her by stuffing a PVC like pipe down her throat. Like the second movie, Sienna puts up a ferocious fight against Art, managing to slash and stab him multiple times as well as knifing him to a wall, but it would not be a happy ending. Gabbie ends up falling into a trap hole that opens up in the living room despite Sienna trying to save her. At the end of the movie, Sienna vows to get revenge for her cousin.
As confirmed by director Damien Leone, there will be a fourth installment of the Terrifier movies. I cannot wait to see it as I have thoroughly enjoyed all three of the previous movies. There is the perfect amount of horror to make it a scary movie while also providing some funny moments to lighten the mood a bit. While the storylines of each movie could run dry at times, almost everything that happened ended up mattering as the movies went along. The acting I believe was the main driving force behind how good the movies were. David Howard Thornton playing Art proves why silent horror villains are the best kind, as his signature toothy smile, silent attitude, and brutal ways of killing people makes Art the Clown the best horror villain of all time. The acting from the heroes was also phenomenal, especially in the last two movies. Lauren Laverra’s facial expressions and attitude were amazing, and Elliott Fulham really embraced his role as a nerd in the film. As a caveat, I do not recommend this film trilogy for anyone beginning in horror, or who is not accustomed to blood and gore as it may be too much. For any true horror fans though, this is a great movie that puts the classics of horror like the Halloween and Freddy Krueger franchises to shame.
“This movie [Terrifier 3] is by far the most disturbing and heart wrenching of any of these movies…” (Zach Myers).
