The ultra gory slasher Terrifier 3 arrives on October 9 in French theaters. Rarely, it will be prohibited for those under 18, a first since 2006 in the horror genre.
If you don’t know the Terrifier saga, then this anecdote about the third film, to be released in France, should give you an idea of the show concocted by Damien Leone. According to this article published on October 3 by LADBible, nine people left their seats in the first sequence during a preview of Terrifier 3. One of them even started vomiting because of the gory and shocking images that flashed before her eyes.
The ax has therefore fallen in France: Terrifier 3 will be one of the rare films to be banned for under 18s at the cinema. A rare fact in general, even more so for the horror genre: we must in fact go back to 2006 and Saw 3 to see such a sanction. Usually, it is rather the representation of sex that is condemned (as this Allociné ranking shows). The distributors ESC Editions, Shadowz Films and Factoris Films regretted this decision, in a joint press release published on October 4.
What’s wrong with Terrifier 3
ESC Editions, Shadowz Films and Factoris Films believed they could get away with a ban on under-16s, as was the case for Terrifier 2 in 2022. But Terrifier 3 seems to go ever further into the extreme, which the director fully accepts. “ Believe me, I guarantee that the first five minutes of this film will be very controversial (…). If you thought Art the Clown’s reign of terror was extreme in the second movie, then you ain’t seen nothing yet. » In the first Terrifierpreviously unreleased in theaters, we still saw a woman literally being sawed in two. We wonder what could be worse…
Damien Leone also believes that no major studio would have signed Terrifier 3 just reading the first five pages of the script. There is, however, a financial interest: while Terrifierwith a paltry (not to say amateurish) budget, only grossed a little over $400,000 at the worldwide box office, Terrifier 2 exceeded $15 million.
We also note a growing plebiscite: Terrifier 2 has a score of 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, while Terrifier 3 climbs to 89%. “ It’s a film that thrives on its own macabre mission, and it accomplishes that mission with undeniable flair », notes for example Slashfilm on the third part, well received at festivals. In short, there is an appetite for this saga centered around a killer clown, who enjoys killing his victims with immense violence.
Distributors believe that the ban on minors will harm the commercial success of the film, since it will be more difficult to sell. In their eyes, Terrifier 3 East “ an arthouse film in the purest tradition of the so-called slasher genre, with perfectly ‘grand-guignolesque’ and unrealistic violence “. They hide behind a tone that does not take itself seriously at all and, thus, the scent of blood is part of an artistic approach. We can also see the glass half full: for a film that elevates gore to the rank of art, such a sentence is a form of accomplishment.
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