“Terrifier 3” spoilers follow.
No one goes to a slasher flick looking for a deathly serious drama about an unstoppable killing machine who offs their victims in wildly inventive fashion. The point of every slasher movie that sprung up in the wake of trailblazers like “Psycho,” “Black Christmas” and “Halloween” is to give fright-seeking viewers a Grand Guignol good time at the movies. Granted, some slashers can blend serious themes into their stalk-and-kill-a-thon structures (Joseph Zito’s “The Prowler” offers up tough commentary about America’s post-war treatment of its veterans), but those movies know to lighten up when it comes to delivering the splatter.
This is a lesson filmmaker Damien Leone has learned well. The twisted creator of the “Terrifier” franchise and its greasepaint-slathered antagonist Art the Clown grew up a fan of slashers, and knows full well what sickos like him are looking for out of the genre. They want kills that go way too far, that are frankly impossible to execute, and, in that blood-spurting vein, are uproarious to behold. Leone’s been shredding the outside of the envelope since he split poor Dawn (Catherine Corcoran) in half in the first movie, and he’s somehow managed to top himself with each sequel.
While Leone strikes a silly tone from the outset in “Terrifier 3” (and kicks it into overdrive with the Art the Clown Christmas carol), he genuinely cares about the welfare of his main characters, particularly Lauren LaVera’s savage survivor Sienna Shaw, and thus gets us caring more than expected about her fate. We can handle her getting hacked and stabbed, but we don’t want her to fall prey to Art (David Howard Thornton).
So when it was not looking good for Sienna in the film’s final set piece, Leone encouraged Thornton to inject a bit of humor into the moment.
Even a Terrifier movie needs a touch of levity
While taking a victory lap or three on his Twitter account over the huge opening weekend racked up by “Terrifier 3,” Leone quote-tweeted a fan’s clip of Art slapping Sienna in the back of the head while she’s tied to a chair in front of the family Christmas tree. For Art, this is as innocuous as it gets, and, as such, earns an unexpected laugh from moviegoers.
It turns out that this was an ad-libbed bit courtesy of Thornton. As Leone wrote in his post:
You never know what’s gonna catch on while making a Terrifier. This was something I spontaneously told David to do on set every time he passed @_LaurenLaVera_ because I felt the finale was too dark and we needed some levity 🤷♂️🤡 Glad we share the same twisted sense of humor😜 https://t.co/Gu8bYdrq2m
— Damien Leone (@damienleone) October 12, 2024
Fortunately, Sienna winds up surviving yet another Art the Clown ordeal, so we can revisit this moment and laugh knowing that she’ll eventually come out on top. It’s little flourishes like this that add an extra bit of stink to the film’s best kills (like the shower scene chainsaw combo that still has us, er, buzzing).
