On stop the clowning: in theaters this Wednesday, Terrifier 3 and his murderous clown make a spectacular entrance onto the track of the great media circus. Thanks to the plenary film classification commission of the CNC (National Center for Cinema and Animated Images) which, since it officially banned the film for under-18s for sadism and “glorification of violence”, during of his vote on Thursday, October 3, offered him a sounding board unlike that of the first two parts. Respectively released in 2017 and 2022, Terrifier and its sequel had been “only” prohibited for those under 16 years of age. And the last gory feature film to be hit with this decision in France was, in 2006, another third opus: Saw 3.
“The Affair” Terrifier 3 is therefore a first in eighteen years in France. The company ESC, one of the three joint distributors of this bloody adventure (with the Shadowz platform and Factoris Films), for its part hesitates between consternation and discreet rubbing of hands. “When we received the call from the CNC informing us of the ban on under-18s last Friday, we were initially dejected, we were really afraid of losing theaters and being let go by the exhibitors” , entrusted to Point Pop Victor Lamoussière, distribution director at ESC.
Assailed by the press for three days (he was even invited to the BFMTV set this morning), the professional, a little overwhelmed by events, continues: “We have since been reassured. Before the CNC’s opinion, we were aiming for a distribution of the film of between 120 and 130 copies, now we are at 115 throughout France. We therefore lost a few cinemas, but overall the operators and the main circuits (UGC, CGR, Kinepolis, Pathé, MK2, etc.) support us and I salute them. They understand that Terrifier 3 is part of in-depth editorial work on our part which, for three years, has consisted of promoting horror films in theaters, certainly radical, but original, intended for a mature community which does not create the slightest excess in theaters. »
A third lap of the track with fanfare
And Victor Lamoussière recalls the examples from the previous ones Terrifier or even the most gruesome The Sadnessthis traumatic Korean zombie film, released in 2021 under the ESC flag, has passed through the multiplexes according to him. For the classification commission, which thus justifies its ban on under-18s, Terrifier 3 is a “violent and gory film which has the particularity of multiplying sadistic scenes of extreme violence with the desire to associate the spectator with a form of glorification of violence presented in a favorable light likely to seriously disturb the sensitivity of the public with nevertheless a narrative statement with a gory aesthetic.
Unfair – as Victor Lamoussière believes – or not, this decision undoubtedly benefits the movie, which is released in cinemas in France, this October 9, before the rest of the world – around fifteen territories in all. On this first Wednesday of operation, taking into account its pre-sales, Terrifier 3 should almost reach 10,000 entries, more than double (!) of the first Wednesday of Terrifier 2. A third round of the track with fanfare is therefore offered to the bloodthirsty Art the Clown, supernatural serial killer at the heart of this franchise which aims to reconnect with the heydays of slasher once carried by the sagas Halloween, Freddy or Scream…
Guts in a Christmas wreath
Listening only to his courage, Le Point Pop watched the awful jojo. Filmed in an elegant scope format and a warmly colored photo, Terrifier 3 follows on from the events of the previous one. We find young Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera), surviving with her younger brother Jonathan the attacks of the degenerate clown in Terrifier 2, but now sentenced to regular stays in a psychiatric hospital. Supposed to be dead at the end of the first film, Art was resurrected by a mysterious evil entity in the second part and, in the third, he resumes his litany of murders in Miles County (New York), in the middle of the holidays. Christmas.
Mixing gore and fantasy, Terrifier 3 should in principle have received the same type of ban as its predecessors. Is it more particularly unsustainable? The level of guts remains the same: dismemberments, decapitations, disembowellings, copious projections of hemoglobin, use of a small intestine as a Christmas garland, full-frame scalpings against a backdrop of the victims’ cries… Not devoid of a certain humor, this who saves him from the all-gloomy, as in his time Chainsaw Massacre, also Father Fouettard of sensitive souls despite an almost total absence of blood on the screen, this third Terrifier can – and must – be experienced above all as an outlet, a release. A borderline experience which, in our opinion, nevertheless draws a very clear boundary between good and evil. We can hardly blame him for any “glorification” of violence, of which he certainly makes a spectacle but in the pure tradition of the most famous jewels of the slasher (this cinematic genre whose “hero” is a serial killer).
Art le Clown, futur Jigsaw de « Saw » ?
The difference though? This time, Art the Clown attacks children, twice: during his traumatic prologue (an entire family massacred in the middle of the night at home by the demon with the scary jaw) then, later, in a shopping center , when the monster disguised as Santa Claus pulverizes kids with a parcel bomb. Excellently made, the gory special effects are disturbingly realistic despite the obvious grand guignolesque nature of their staging. The author of these lines will also dare to add that, since a certain October 7, 2023 and the story of the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists on civilians, men, women and children, the vision of scenes of barbarity and extreme sadistic torture such as that shows them Terrifier 3even within the framework of his fiction, can no longer really be experienced “as before”.
ALSO READ Alexandre Aja: “I was looking for the elegance of a 1970s film” It would be interesting to determine to what extent the unprecedented fear caused by this day of absolute horror in the collective unconscious may have played a role in the decision of the CNC commission. Still Terrifier 3despite an unnecessarily long duration (two hours! And again, the previous one lasted 138 minutes!) and the discomfort aroused by its excesses, does not lack cinematographic qualities. First of all, never take yourself too seriously. The legitimacy of its ban on under-18s ultimately remains complex to decide, as the film balances delicately on the thin line separating simply extreme entertainment from indecency.
Victor Lamoussière, for his part, is rightly delighted that, after years of pollution of the horror genre by a swarm of sequels, prequels or reboots, an entirely new figure of evil (Art the Clown, bogeyman on the verge of becoming a real popular phenomenon in the United States) joins in the Pantheon of great knackers Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, Ghostface or even Jigsaw of Saw. Terrifier 3 will he win over as many fans as Saw 3 (770,000 entries to France in 2006 despite its ban on minors)? Will the franchise launched by New York director Damien Leone experience the same longevity as the Saw (ten films to date)? The end of Terrifier 3 in any case leaves the possibility of a fourth part hovering. A suspense to cut with a knife…
