The horror movie Terrifier 3 arrives in France this Wednesday with a ban on under-18s. A decision taken due to the great violence and sadism of certain scenes. Please note, this article reveals part of the plot of the film.
Limitless cruelty, to satisfy horror fans who never get enough. This is what led to a ban on minors under 18 on the American horror film Terrifier 3in theaters this Wednesday in France. A work mixing sadism, nihilism and grand guignol and whose “hero” is a perverse killer, Art the clown.
At a preview on October 4 in the United Kingdom, Terrifier 3 caused discomfort and vomiting. Some spectators, shocked by what they saw, fled after a few minutes. On TikTok, videos of the vomit bags donated during this screening went viral. Other images show the frightened faces of spectators after the screening.
One scene in particular crystallizes the public’s fear. And should give rise to many nightmares in the coming weeks. A gruesome murder scene in a shower that would make that of Psychosis for a Disney cartoon. Lasting four minutes, it describes the slow chainsaw massacre of a couple, Cole and Mia, surprised in the middle of sexual intercourse by Art the clown.
Scalped victim
As the couple embraces under the warm water, Art approaches the diaper stall. Seeing a shadow approaching, the lovers become frightened. With his chainsaw, Art destroys the glass shower door. Cole then tries to intervene to protect his companion, but Art cuts his hand, his fingers then one of his legs.
The blade, poorly sharpened, however, struggles to completely sever the leg, which remains attached to the body thanks to a few nerves. Cole tries to escape, but his leg no longer holds and he collapses to the ground, to Art’s laughter. All enhanced with explicit close-ups.
Mia is still in the shower, in shock. Art the laceration. She protects her body, but Art persists and ends up scalping her. Close-ups hide nothing. The absence of music leaves the audience alone with the screams of the victim and the sounds of the chainsaw. The abrupt editing accompanies the violence of the blows.
Sex reduced to shreds
The next shot shows Mia, in agony, covered in blood and her jaw torn off. Art walks up to her and puts some fancy sunglasses on her nose before beating her body to a pulp. Then Art goes to Cole, on the ground. He tears off his leg, pulling on the raw nerves, then cuts his body in two lengthwise.
A succession of shots shows Art cutting up Cole, then opening his stomach to extract his entrails. He massacres her body: he slashes her face, separates her arms from her trunk and reduces her penis to shreds before bathing in her blood to the background of Christmas music.
This is the most striking scene in a film which also does not hesitate to horribly kill children, one of the absolute taboos of cinema. In the first minutes, a teenager is found decapitated on his bed. A scene that caused vomiting during a preview.
In another scene, Art blasts a group of children with booby-trapped presents. One shot shows a child’s corpse with its face exploded. Minutes earlier, several men were decapitated by the killer clown, who also ripped off the jaw of another of his victims with his bare hands.
Flayed Alive
These scenes of unspeakable cruelty aim to surprise the public. However, they do not seek to be realistic. The blood is intentionally bright red. The corpses ring false. With his outrageous facial expressions, Art creates a shift and arouses laughter. The scenes sometimes resemble trashy cartoons Happy Tree Friends.
Previous films in the license had already caused a stir with similar horrific scenes. The first part became cult thanks to a scene involving a hacksaw. In the sequel, a sequence inspired by a book about Jack the Ripper shows a woman being skinned alive. Horror cinema seeking uneasiness by staging images of violence never before seen in cinema.
Grand-guignolesque violence
Third part of a license imagined by director Damien Leone, Terrifier 3 is the first horror film in twenty years to be banned for under-18s in France. A first since the release of Saw 3 in 2006. The decision of the Classification Commission “will seriously harm the release of the film”, its French distributors lamented last Friday in a press release.
“Terrifier 3 is an arthouse film in the purest tradition of the so-called slasher genre, with perfectly ‘grand-guignolesque’ and unrealistic violence. The film never takes itself seriously, and we know that spectators will have all the distance, all the maturity necessary to understand and apprehend this artistic approach,” they also insisted.
And to conclude: “The history of genre cinema, its excesses and its excesses, are intimately linked to the very history of cinema. Restricting its access to spectators will always be a serious decision with a worrying message, isolating the authors by distancing them of their audience.”
Related News :