Santa Claus is trash
If you are one of those who retort to their tripaille-loving friends “Oh, me you know, gore for gore’s sake…”it is not this third opus that will reconcile you with the saga Terrifier. Yet with an honest budget, he remains a broke bisserie infiltrated among the box office bigwigs, whose sole aim is to commit the most sadistic and wicked carnage possible. The phenomenal success of the previous film only perfects its camouflage: Terrifier 3 hides its DIY origins much betterwhich now makes it a perfect predator, ready to seriously shake up the uninitiated and annoy detractors of the genre.
It’s simple: it would almost look like a studio film. Obviously, Damien Leone heard the criticisms leveled at his previous (too) feature film. The duration has been reduced a little, the rhythm has been refined and the photo becomes more shimmering. Although he continues to vaguely develop the mythology around his antagonist, he no longer plays it Claws of the Night of the poor and spares us a laborious climax. Only the acting, for certain repeat offenders, remains uncertain, with one exception of course.
Well aware that he is now playing in the big leagues and that his work will remain an ugly intruder, the director overplays the imposture: Terrifier 3 is on the surface a nice, smooth Christmas film, which could even give the impression of fitting into the so-called respectable industry. Except that this is not the case at all and that the expected good feelings are mimed by a genocidal clown, always played by David Howard Thornton.
A sarcastic note of intent brought to life with enthusiasm (we want the fir glasses!) and which forgives the usual slag. Unsurprisingly, entirely articulated around its prosthetic effects and its low provocation of the forehead, the film does not shine with its scenario, which we would not even mention if it did not treat it with such seriousness.
Can somebody please think of the children ?
We therefore always follow Sienna (Lauren LaVera), slightly traumatized by the methodical massacre of everyone around her, which we can understand. Now in the spotlight, she tries to have a normal Christmas with the few members of her family she has left. Obviously, Art and his zombie sidekick won’t be able to help but spoil the party. That’s the excuse. The principle remains the same: Art decimates just about anything in its path and/or has a spinal cordusing various weapons, ranging in this episode from the traditional chainsaw (finally!) to more original instruments.
If you are one of those people who knows how to appreciate a close-up facial peeling, this third opus will keep its promises. Not that the feature film manages to go up a notch above the grueling bedroom sequence of Terrifier 2 – which seems impossible in this economy – but it better distributes the abuse suffered by its pieces of meat (also called characters) and offers some sequences that are at least as delicious, literally and figuratively. The shower scene and its extreme black humor are already delighting the American media. So much the worse for the suggestion dear to Hitchcock.
Yes, the saga has perhaps already reached its ceiling when it comes to the gore effects, still impressive, signed by Leone himself. But she compensates by expanding her repertoire of provocations. Not only Terrifier 3 enjoys hijacking religious symbols in a Mel Gibson style, but he attacks small children from his first crime. The subterfuge is quite crude, for obvious reasons, but it’s a safe bet that it was the drop of blood that broke the camel’s back in the eyes of the CNC commission in France, which awarded him an extremely rare Prohibition for under 18s. A sanction that looks like a trophy.
His desires for very stupid and very very wicked transgressions are nevertheless part of the tradition of the grand guignol (not bad no, it’s French) and the delusions of Herschell Gordon Lewis: Terrifier 3 hacks the Hollywood system as a whole, from its distribution circuit to its cutesy codes, to better reduce it to shreds, to better exhibit its guts hidden behind good feelings and clichés, not much more scintillating than ours.
