It’s hard to identify a modern-era horror icon who can actually manage to leave a mark in the horror zeitgeist beside the classics—Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers, Leatherface, Chucky—but Damien Leone’s terrifying creation has managed to cut through the clutter and stand out. A cross between Pennywise the Clown and Jason Voorhees, with a demented humour resembling that of Freddy Kreuger, Art the Clown is one of the primary reasons why “The Terrifier” franchise has become one of the “little engines that could.” “Terrifier 3” became the highest-grossing unrated film of all time, and while that could also be attributed to the genre it dabbles in—slasher tending towards extreme gore—one can’t also deny that the installments whet the appetite of horror fans craving these forms of “extreme cinema.”.
Terrifier 3 (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
What happened in Terrifier 2?
The Terrifier trilogy, especially from the end of its first film, shares a somewhat intricate but vague mythology, along with a central cast. Following the Miles County Massacre (the inciting event of Terrifier 1), Art would maul the face of the final girl of that film, Victoria Hayes (Samantha Scaffidi). He would then shoot himself in the head to avoid being apprehended, but was resurrected later by an unknown entity (credited as The Little Pale Girl) and would resume his killing spree.
It turns out that our protagonist Sienna’s late father had been aware of the existence of Art the Clown, almost bordering on obsession, and had even designed a valkyrie-like character for his artwork based on his daughter, also gifting her a sword before his death from a brain tumour. Towards the end of the movie, Sienna would battle Art the Clown in a carnival in an effort to rescue her brother.
What Dark Fate Awaits Sienna and Victoria in the “Terrifier” Universe?
She would be stabbed in the gut by Art and thrown through a portal into hell, where she would drop into a water tank, left to die from the gut wound and drown. She would be resurrected by the sword, apparently possessing healing capabilities, which would allow Sienna to escape from the tank and decapitate Art, rescuing her brother consequently. The Shaw siblings would be shocked to witness the Little Pale Girl walking away with the decapitated head of Art.
“Terrifier” (2016) reveals that Victoria Hayes, the horribly scarred survivor of the Miles County Massacre, would mutilate the anchor of a news program post her interview segment in that same program. At the end of “Terrifier 2,” it is revealed that Hayes is institutionalised at the Miles County Psychiatric Hospital, following the events of the first film’s opener. She would be humming the tune of “The Clown Cafe” (an Art the Clown analogous recreation of Mickey House Funhouse), while writing “Vicky + Art” and other colourful obscenities (coincidentally the same three obscenities Art would carve on the skin of his victim in the 2011 Terrifier short film), before appearing to give birth to Art’s head, with her eyes glowing similarly to The Pale Girl, hinting at a possession by a demonic entity.
How does Victoria resurrect Art the Clown?
Meanwhile, Art’s headless body would decapitate a poor patrolman, wear the patrolman’s head, and make his way to the asylum. There, Victoria Hayes would already attack the female orderly who had come to investigate the cries in her room and allow Art the clown to maul her face and eat, Hayes drinking the goop through Art’s oesophagus.
Victoria would then kill the other orderly before seemingly sewing Art’s head back to his body. The duo would then flee to an abandoned house. There Victoria would break the mirror in the bathroom and slit her wrists with the help of the shards of glass and seemingly die while laying in a bathtub. Meanwhile, Art the Clown would sit on a rocking chair in the attic. They essentially would enter hibernation for over five years, almost as if ordered to wait.
How are Art and Victoria awoken five years later?
Five years later, the bodies of Art and Victoria would be discovered by two demolition workers, having come by to destroy the abandoned house. The duo would kill the workers in a gruesome fashion, as par for the course for them, with Victoria actually getting off on Art bashing the head of the worker to pulp. The duo would soon resume their activities, with Victoria working on a costume and Art working on a liquid nitrogen gas cylinder.
Art would begin his killing spree by meeting a Santa impersonator at a bar, sharing his glee for crossing paths with “Santa Claus,” before killing the rest of the patrons, tying up the impersonator, and freezing his hands and feet via liquid nitrogen, before breaking them to bloody pieces with a hammer and killing him. He would then take the Santa Claus costume before sneaking into the house of an unsuspecting family and brutally murdering them with an axe. This event would be depicted at the beginning of the film, the event occurring on the night of Christmas Eve.
How is Sienna dealing with the events of the previous film?
It is heavily implied that Sienna being discharged from the psychiatric hospital would break the hibernation of Art and Victoria. Sienna would be released from the hospital to live under the care of her aunt Jess and her family. Her husband and Sienna’s uncle Greg would come to pick her up. While Jess, Greg, and their daughter Gabbie (who idolizes Sienna) make every effort to welcome her, Sienna struggles, suffering from survivor’s guilt and consequently hallucinating her friend Brooke, blaming her for being unsuccessful at saving her from Art (in the previous film).
Sienna also struggles from connecting with her brother Jonathan, who, contrary to the previous film whereby he had researched into Art the Clown and tried to convince Sienna about her destiny, is now actively trying to move on, taking his meds, and diligently trying to avoid having to appear at a true crime podcast hosted by Mia, the girlfriend of Jonathan’s roommate Cole.
What causes the explosion at the mall?
At the mall, while going Christmas shopping with Gabbie, Sienna hallucinates hearing the tune of “The Clown Cafe” from the speakers at the mall before believing that Art is there at the mall, disguised as Santa Claus. However, she restrains herself from informing Gabbie or her relatives about this, instead choosing to wait and meet up with Jonathan later.
At the mall, Art, post the home invasion massacre, enters the mall and takes up a post as a mall Santa, managing to entertain the kids there through his miming skills and giving gifts off his grab bag. While he is accosted off that stage by the security because the parents are worried he would be scaring the kids, one of the kids opens a gift from that grab bag, which houses a bomb. That causes an explosion, killing the kids as well as several Christmas shoppers.
What does Sienna learn about Art the Clown?
Sienna visits Jonathan at his college, where she meets Cole and his girlfriend Mia. Mia, who is obsessed with the Miles County Massacre, is very curious and tactlessly asks Sienna how the siblings are coping, to which Sienna lashes out, revealing about her sleepless nights and survivor’s guilt, essentially rejecting Mia’s proposal of appearing in the podcast.
Later at the chapel, Sienna reveals to Jonathan her belief in Art still being alive and kicking. She reminds Jonathan of the letters he had written to her when she had been in the hospital, where he laid out the apparent details of Art the Clown. According to Jonathan, he had correctly deduced that the pale little girl had been a demon, and they would need to destroy her. According to Jonathan, demons would choose a vessel to enter the physical world, and they would prefer their host to be a sinister, depraved one, perhaps like a serial killer.
Sienna deduces that the demon is using Victoria Hayes as a host now and agrees with Jonathan that she seems to be chosen as the counterpart to the physical attribute of the demon to stop him from becoming too powerful. She believes her father left the sword for precisely that reason. While Jonathan is reluctant to entirely believe his own theories as he has been somewhat successful in moving on, he still tries to advise Sienna on next steps. Sienna decides to fetch the sword from the Terrifier attraction, where she had let it post the altercation between her and Art.
How did Art and Victoria sneak into Sienna’s house?
That evening, Sienna would return, with the sword gift-wrapped as a Christmas present so as not to arouse suspicion. She would also admonish Gabbie for reading her journal while snooping around, reminding both Gabbie and herself that the entire event might have been a hallucination. However, upon hearing the news about the massacre at the mall, she would become convinced about Art the clown’s resurgence and beg Jonathan to come to their house instead of spending that night at the college, to which Jonathan agrees. Greg, visibly disliking Sienna’s freakouts and wondering whether she should be sent back to the hospital, drives over to the college to fetch Jonathan while Sienna sleeps.
Unbeknownst to Jonathan and anyone else, Art the Clown had sneaked into Jonathan’s college dorm and would brutally murder both Mia and Cole whilst they would be in the middle of having sex in the shower. While Mia’s face would be torn off by Art, Cole would be sawed in half while alive and screaming, with the help of a chainsaw. The murder of Cole literalizes the dialogue by Heather Chandler in the film Heathers: “Fuck Me Gently with a Chainsaw” (albeit not gently at all).
While it would not be explicitly revealed, it is heavily implied that when Greg would reach Jonathan’s dorm, his phone would be received by Victoria, disguising her voice to resemble Jonathan. The two would kill both Jonathan and Greg before driving to Sienna’s place, or they would force Greg to drive them over to their place before killing him and dismembering his body, cutting his head off and scooping off his intestines, and then pinning his body to the wall, with the head acting as the star on their Christmas tree.
What does Sienna’s dreams reveal?
Sienna would be unaware of all these events. Deep in slumber, she would dream of her father first conceptualizing the angel warrior armed with the fire sword. The character in the artwork resembles Sienna’s look in the previous film. But when presenting the drawing to her, the young Sienna would be hit with flashes of the events of Art’s altercation with her that would occur in the near future. Her father, determined, would assure her that he would always be there for her.
The dream then changes, and now an adult Sienna finds herself in a dark, fiery dungeon, where she witnesses an angel holding the chain wrapped around the neck of a demonic figure whose face is adorned by an iron mask. The demon is busy hammering and creating Sienna’s armour. A second clang wakes her up, and Sienna finds it is almost two minutes to two in the morning. But as she walks downstairs, she hears Greg planning with her aunt Jess to smother Sienna in her sleep, only for Sienna to come face to face with the horror in the living room.
Terrifier 3 (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
How does Art and Victoria torture Sienna?
While Greg’s eviscerated body is pinned up to the wall, with his head as the star of the Christmas tree, Sienna watches in horror as Victoria, her hair adorned with a crown of thorns similar to Jesus Christ, screams ‘crazy lady’ to her face. She rushes to fetch Gabbie, but Art drags her down, punches her in the stomach, and then knocks her unconscious with a mallet.
When she regains consciousness, she finds herself tied up to a chair, her mouth taped up. Her aunt Jess is tied up to a chair opposite her, while the center table has a cage covered by a cloth. Tearing off the tape from Jess’ mouth, Victoria reveals the contents of the cage as the response to her plea about her daughter’s whereabouts. The cage contains a skinless head, which is in turn being scrabbled and fed on by rats that Victoria reveals to be Gabbie’s.
In an effort to torture the incapacitated Sienna further, as well as to brutally respond to Jess’ angry retort, Art hammers a tube into her mouth, then forces rats down her mouth. Before she dies, Jess implores Sienna to kill them both. As the rats force down Jess’ mouth, Art slits her throat. Victoria then drives the nail further into the coffin by first placing the crown of thorns on Sienna’s head. While the blood flows down from Sienna’s head, Victoria reveals that skinless head as belonging to Jonathan, while Gabbie is still alive, albeit held hostage by Art.
How does Sienna kill Victoria?
Victoria reveals that all these elaborate moments of torture are all a ploy to emotionally break Sienna so that it becomes easier for the demon possessing Victoria’s body to enter Sienna’s. However, the demon is unable to execute his plan, as Sienna’s will still remains unbroken. As Art finally prepares to use his knife to slit Gabbie’s throat, Gabbie distracts them by lamenting that Sienna would die, not knowing the present she had gifted her.
Victoria, to further the emotional torture, brings out the gift. Before allowing Sienna to open it, she instructs Art to break her hands to a pulp before opening her restraints. In bloody hands, Sienna struggles to open her gift, and as she finally opens the box, it is revealed to be the gift containing the sword that Sienna had fetched that evening. Gabbie had read her journal and remembered the sword and had managed to distract her captors. Armed with the sword, Sienna throws it at Victoria’s chest, impaling her. As the demon struggles to escape from the body, Sienna drags the sword out and drives it through her outstretched mouth, then decapitating her.
Is Sienna successful in killing Art?
Sienna doesn’t have time to celebrate her win with Gabbie because Art attacks her with the chainsaw, which Sienna manages to block with the enchanted sword. While that fight continues in the living room, a shocked Gabbie crawls to the now battered and mutilated body of her mother. Unbeknownst to both Gabbie and Sienna, Victoria’s decapitated body is pooling out dark and acidic blood, slowly burning through the floor and creating smoke.
After a bloody and brutal fight, as Art moves forward with a hammer to deliver the killing blow, Sienna uses her sword to drive it through Art’s chest, pinning it through the heart. However, she is unable to deliver the killing blow because the acidic blood produces a portal to hell, dragging both Jess’ body as well as Gabbie’s.
Gabbie tries to hold on to the ledge and cries out for Sienna. Sienna reluctantly pulls the sword out of Art and rushes to drag Gabbie out of the abyss, but she is unable to hold on and pull Gabbie out due to her hands being battered. Thus Gabbie loses grip and falls into the abyss with the sword. As Sienna laments at the loss of her cousin sister, she sees her hands healing, lending credence to her power slowly developing independent of her proximity to the sword. She pledges that she will find and rescue Gabbie.
Meanwhile, Art manages to flee through a window. The last we see is Art, waiting by a bus stand, and then hitching a bus ride. As the driver and the sole passenger look at the bloody clown taking a seat at the back, he takes out his signature horn and honks while smiling in that gleeful fashion that signals another murder spree about to begin.
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