What's The Movie About?
Art the Clown, a slasher who is a fantasy of someone who regrets not going postal in high school, returns to stalk the final girl from the last movie BECAUSE... he's a demon. That's it. Art is a demon and Sienna is an Angel and they are prophesied to fight forever and ever and ever because the franchise will go on forever and ever and ever because clearly humanity has done something horrible to make God punish us forever and ever and ever...
What I Like.
The guy playing Art is a funny physical performer. When he wasn't killing people I had a laugh at some of his scenes. He kinda reminded me of the Mask, but not CGI and he doesn't talk, so he's better. I really want to reiterate that my issues with the Art character have nothing to do with David Howard Thornton. He was just hired to play the character that was written for him, and he did a good job. The effects, costuming, and setting were also well done and lend itself well to a horror Christmas atmosphere. And there's a couple scenes where characters interact that I thought was interesting.
What I Didn't Like.
Too bad those interactions don't MATTER FOR SHIT. The movie ends with everyone except for Sienna and Art dead. Nothing is resolved. No plot point in the movie finishes. Just the two characters surviving for the sequel because of literal Deus Ex Machina and Diabolus Ex Machina. It was all for nothing. Similar to Civil War, I noticed, but at least the BAD GUY died in that one. Hopefully you came over those overly gratuitous gore effects earlier, because Terrifier 3 has NOTHING ELSE. Why do any of the characters matter? They all just die. The story is stupid. For some fucking reason it's Christmas, five years after the last movie, and I think it's just because they wanted Art to run around in a Santa Suit. It makes less sense that people just tolerate Art for any amount of time instead of immediately throwing out or calling the police on the CREEPIEST LOOKING CLOWN EVER. There is literally a part where kids are running over to him excitedly. Like I know he's giving away toys, but fuck off movie. I GUARENTEE that any kid wouldn't go within ten feet of Pennywise but the pedophile dial is cranked from 6 to 9.
Every event in this movie is just obnoxious. The kills are way to pleased with themselves for how boring they are, and the only one that isn't boring is one of the grossest things I've ever seen. And almost all of them drag themselves out for as loooooong aaaaaaaas fuuuuuuuuucking pooooooooooooooooooosible. When tension is built it needs a quick release for the fear factor to work. To watch Art jump a guy, the guy start yelling in anger, then Art stabs a railroad spike through his hand, then the guy starts screaming in pain, then we have to see Art reach over and grab a hammer, then the victim is begging for mercy, then Art whacks the guy with the hammer, then the guy goes "NONONONONONO!", then Art tears his head off, and MY FUCKING GOD. I know what's gonna happen as soon as Art grabs his victim. Dragging out the kill is not scary. It's watching a trench coat mafioso jerk off over his switchblade collection. But hey, at least that preferable to seeing a disfigured woman jill herself off with a broken piece of glass. Which is something that happens in this godforsaken I-hesitate-to-call-it-a-film.
Maybe it's hedonistic enjoyment. Maybe I'm getting to high-minded about the serial killer movie. That's what you're thinking right now, right? Well you're wrong and I can prove it with two scenes. First is the sex scene. It's one of the blandest sex scenes ever, because there is no explicit nudity. This movie is Not Rated. They had no restrictions, and could have totally could have gone completely full X-Rated nudity if they wanted to. So the fact that there is none means they must not have wanted to. Actually, I lied. There's one shot of explicit nudity, when Art is using a chainsaw to carve up the guy's taint. So the movie is okay with showing nudity when it is being mutilated. But again, maybe that's the statement, the hedonism is just for violent imagery? Well, no. I keep harping on the kills being boring, because they are, but the gore is lame too. Much like the characters being too stupid to be realistic and too sensible for the movie to be a parody, the gore is too tame to be splat-stick and too unrealistic to give tragic catharsis. They throw around blood so vibrant it would make a Hammer Horror tell them to turn down the saturation, but everyone seems to bleed realistically, no excess spray or gallons fall from victims. A couple people get disemboweled, but all Art seems to pull out of them is large intestines. People get faces eaten and decapitated, or have their limbs chopped off with axes and chainsaws, but I am not positive if I saw a bone even once. It's all so bland and the various mauling scenes blend together. And I can't stress enough, they mean fucking nothing. No character who get's killed by Art has a satisfying story arc or contribute to a plot line. Maybe it's tragic catharsis? Like look at all these characters we built up, not say goodbye because we are gonna unceremoniously and graphically kill all of them! Except the brother from the last movie get's killed off screen. Yeah. No warning. No hint that it's coming. Off. Fucking. Screen.
I keep thinking back to that sentence I read on Wikipedia. "[The writer/director] has expressed regret for leaving the protagonists underdeveloped." Well whatever you think is developed is man, this ain't it. Sienna is where most of the character lies, and her whole thing is this stupid quasi-biblical prophecy thing along with being traumatized from the last movie. Fair, if I lived through that I'd be messed up too. But the PTSD writing is as subtle as a mortar bombing. Sienna literally sees the disgusting mangled corpse of her friend screaming at her. I was liking the flashbacks with her dad until it transitioned into this bizarre origin for her sword. A sword, which for all the build up of it's appearance and how much they bang on how cool and important it is, looks like a plastic prop you can buy at Walgreens for 10 bucks. Actually, it looks worse than that, because the plastic sword I got at Walgreens has a shiny blade and comes with a sheath. And the scene where we see it forged I swear to Beelzebub is 5 decibels louder than the rest of the movie. Because it'll be really scary if we make the audience's eardrums burst, right? The only other characters who gets a modicum of development are the brother, who once again is killed OFF SCREEN, and Sienna's cousin who looks up to her. And she falls into hell! It's for a promise of a sequel, but a) it's less of a promise and more a threat, and b) given the track record of these movies, I would bet when Sienna finds her cousin in hell she'll be completely broken from being barbed wire-skull fucked by Adolf Hitler and Henry Kissinger over the last 8 years or whatever.
All of this comes to my conclusion that Terrifier 3 was not made to be scary, or tell an actual story, or even for hedonistic enjoyment. And the smoking gun is the first thing I though when the movie itself started proper. Why did this movie release in October? Sure, the other two movies did (Kinda sorta if you squint.), but those movies take place on Halloween. Because of Halloween, October is the spooky month so that's when all the Horror movies come out, right? Except not only do horror movies come out all year, ESPECIALLY this year, but this is a holiday horror movie. The whole point of those is to take a ubiquitous cultural moment of fun and enjoyment and make it scary and taboo by breaching social norms. It's an honored tradition that goes back over 400 years if you want to count Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale as the first example. So when you release these movies matter. The cultural context matters. What cultural does Christmas in October bring? It brings the thought of Christmas overtaking all other holidays. The thought of corporations pushing the winter holidays earlier and earlier so they can sell their novelty goods earlier. The thought of retailers pushing seasonal product to sucker in consumers to spend even more money. The pressure of average people to start their gift shopping earlier. Christmas doesn't mean any high minded "peace on Earth" spiritual ideals until December itself. People HATE that Christmas seems to come earlier and earlier every year. (At least the ones who are self-aware enough to distinguish themselves as more that a consumer.) And I think the guy who both wrote and directed this celluloid massacre knows this.
Final Summation.
I am sorry The Substance. I did not enjoy sitting through you, but at least you had a reason. At least their was a message you were conveying to the audience. I am fully prepared to admit that you are a good movie that I just didn't like, although I still hang on to my criticisms about you. But it's true. The Substance is a good movie that just wasn't for me.
Terrifier 3 is edgelord bullshit. Anyone actually well served by this crock of feces would find greater enjoyment from a real snuff film because they are a goddamn psychopath. Everyone else just thinks they'll get big boy brave points for sticking it out, but it's not an endurance test to watch this movie. No, watching this movie is akin to getting cosmetic surgery with no anesthesia. Unnecessarily painful, completely optional, a waste of time, and at the end you're just worse off.
God. Let's talk about something good. Like Donald Trump.
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