Got into the Christmas spirit on this Black Friday morning... with TERRIFIER 3!
It's a frustrating movie, because you can see that the pieces of a much better film are here, but they’re marred by some unfortunate missteps.
Primarily, the ever-present fixation on the prolonged suffering of Art’s victims really inhibits the ability to appreciate what are, conceptually, some pretty inventive and impressive kill sequences. In the hands of a young Sam Raimi or a young Peter Jackson, this stuff would be a delight, but here, it mostly just feels like an overly mean-spirited bummer.
It’s too bad that director Damien Leone has allowed this to become a major feature of these movies, because there is quite good technical work here, and there are some risky, bold choices that most mainstream films would be unwilling to explore, which is neat (again... conceptually). Character work is unexpectedly thoughtful, and Lauren LaVera gives a legitimately good performance, earning her place as one of the genre’s better final girls (certainly recently, anyway). The Christmas setting has a retro, cozy vibe that’s a nice pivot away from the Halloween flavor of the previous movie.
But it’s just not a lot of fun, and if you want to make these dark ingredients work, a certain deftness and lightness of touch is required that the movie doesn’t provide.