As Terrifier 3 arrives in the world, how the Terrifier franchise has come to prominence by basically going outside of the Hollywood system.
The story goes that at one stage, Damien Leone – the writer and director behind the Terrifier series of films – was offered Hollywood money.
Having fought to get the first Terrifier movie made, off the back of a short film or two, and a failed crowdfunding campaign – he’s found himself at the steering wheel of a growing, profitable horror franchise. He’s not going to be out of pocket by the time Terrifier 3 is released by any measure (early estimates suggest that the $3m production could be looking at a gross upwards of $20m in the US alone). Yet he could have taken the Hollywood millions and be living in a beachfront property by now.
Leone said no.
The trade off would have been that his film, and the lead character of Art the Clown, would have to be toned down a bit. There would have been a push for an R-rating, and there’s very little in Terrifier 3 that sits within that.
To go spoiler light, there’s a moment in Terrifier 3 where a chainsaw makes an appearance, and let’s just say where other films would cut away, Leone’s camera lingers. Adept at physical effects, it’s not hard to see where the $3m – up from $250,000 from the second film – was spent. Leone’s local B&Q would long have sold out of anything in the colour red, let’s put it that way.
It’s also hard to see Damien Leone existing in the Hollywood ecosystem for two reasons. Firstly, his Terrifier films are utterly uncompromising: from the rawness of the first to the scaled-up ambition of the second and third, these are slasher films made the way Leone wants them, with nary a sniff of a test audience in their vicinity.
Secondly, he doesn’t need to go to Hollywood. If anything, Hollywood is increasingly going to come to him. He finds himself in a position that few filmmakers ever have been. He’s the creator of a growing, profitable horror franchise that’s broken into the box office top ten without a major studio going anywhere near it.
I’ve watched these films in reverse, sitting through a screening of Terrifier 3 a few weeks ago, and scribbling in my notes afterwards that a Damien Leone remake of Bambi would be quite something. Never mind Bambi’s mother off camera with the sound of a gunshot, I reckon Leone could get a good five minutes out of that single killing.
Terrifier 3 is managing to do on a larger canvas what low budget horror has traded in for its lifetime: the grizzly, gory, nasty stuff that a studio focus group would comfortably sidestep. This is unashamedly a slasher film, and it duly contains lots of slashing. The kind of thing that used to be saved for a special shelf at the local video shop.
What’s different is that Terrifier has found an audience of scale. UK distributor Signature has been pulling out stops aplenty for the film, from a big screen release of the first two features last month to arguably its biggest and most ambitious ever cinema promotional drive that it’s in the midst of. Gala screenings, interviews aplenty, a wide release… when was the last time something this blood soaked got that kind of treatment?
Going back to that screening I went to, Terrifier 3 smashes a sort-of horror taboo very early in its runtime (Leone has talked about how the first ten minutes of the film alone are enough to put mainstream Hollywood off, and he’s not wrong), and after that, all bets are off. The psychopathic Art the Clown – still not quite as chilling as the clowns from the Doctor Who story The Greatest Show In The Galaxy, but very much in the conversation – has no obvious boundaries.
For fans of the saga, this is nothing new. Art is nasty in a way that few cinema antagonists currently are.
Infamously, in the first film a woman was strung upside down naked, and sliced in half. I can’t say I took pleasure watching this play out, but I had to reconcile that was part of the point. Plus, a willingness to go where others would cut away.
In the case of the latest film, there’s no part of the human anatomy that appears to have spared an interaction with Art the Clown’s toolkit. The effect of it is that it loses its impact as the film continues, though. There’s not much in the way of a red herring to be found: once Art appears, grinning, people tend to end up in pieces, and it’s more a matter of when, not if.
As the set pieces get nastier and nastier – inevitably, there have been walkouts, and the film has concerned censors – it seems to be daring you to look away. But as impressive as the physical effects work is (and it’s a triumph of practical makeup FX), the prolonged nature of the torturous moments drains them of reality. That’s a relief to a degree, and there’s nothing quite on the level of one particular death in Terrifier 2. But it’s nasty stuff, and that, again, feels like the point.
Thing is, it’s easy to dismiss all of this. But go back to the first film. Damien Leone is juggling precious few resources, but knows where to put his camera, knows how to build up to a moment, and gets a lot out of not very much. In an alternate universe, he’s making admired dramas and perhaps a well-shot romantic comedy. In this universe, he’s thinking up new ways to dismember human beings for a living. The lean running time of the first film is in its favour, and also the fact that – underneath the rivers of blood and guts – there’s a story in there. There’s an arc to the picture.
The same is true of Terrifier 3. You might not get much character in Art the Clown himself, but elsewhere, time’s been taken to put people and story around him that hold water. The increased budget and scale also inflates the running time, and that doesn’t help it. Yet the independent spirit is very much thriving in the new film. Leone has set it at Christmas, and that gives him access to a whole host of often copyright-free festive music.
Here then is a franchise that’s been built on scraped together resources, that’s become the horror series to keep an eye on. It’s gone where Hollywood studios wouldn’t even dare to venture, and discovered that, you know what? Audiences are willing to go beyond the multiplex to find stuff like this.
Terrifier 3, though, is playing in multiplexes. Just because the big studios don’t want the series – they want the money, they just don’t have the, er, guts for where the movies go – cinema owners are gladly welcoming it. At the screening I was at, the film was preceded by a look at just how far and wide the blood-splattered face of Art the Clown has gone, and details of how mainstream he’s becoming. A new horror icon, it’s claimed, and he certainly seems to be heading in that direction.
The new film itself? I’m in the ‘admire’ more than ‘like’ camp, and the two hours of relentless nastiness did become a bit, well, much. But also, I get that’s what the core audience for Terrifier is looking for, and I get that the core audience is growing too. Three stars from me, with no urge to watch it again.
Terrifier 4 is already confirmed to be happening, and I’m not going to bet against Terrifier 5 trundling along with a plateful of spleen some time after that. While he’s able to keep funding his movies from the proceeds of the one before, Damian Leone sits in a rare position where he’s now able to make the film he wants, without interference. It’s a George Lucas level of independence, on a smaller scale.
And without – yet – a prequel trilogy…
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