Terrifier 3 (2024) review

Here's another nasty trip to the Leone Land of Lunatics: traumatized Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) checks out of the Sunny Valley Treatment and Recovery Center and moves in with her Aunt Jess (Margaret Anne Florence), Jess' husband Greg (Bryce Johnson) and their daughter Gabbie (Antonella Rose), but Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) and his possessed "girlfriend" Victoria Heyes (Samantha Scaffidi) are hell-bent to rip her apart (as well as everyone else in their way).  It's commendable that the director refused studio funding in order to make the movie the way he wants without interference (it earned $50m at the box office and the budget was approximately $2m), and he's kept up the "promise" to keep it vicious - Art freezes Santa Claus (Daniel Roebuck) with liquid nitrogen and hammers him to pieces, he dispatches a teen couple having sex in the shower with a chainsaw and actually murders children (breaking a horror taboo) - yet it's still well below average when it comes to basic things like structuring scenes, character development and acting (with the exception of the pantomiming Art, who's darkly comedic).  The third act is mostly a wreck, but it saves itself at the very end: two main characters are butchered off-screen, Sienna is tied up in a home invasion scenario, Jess is fed rats through a tube ... and then the resilient antagonist escapes and has to wait for the bus on a snowy December night missing his rotting partner-in-crime.