All through October, I’ll be posting reviews of the best of the best films in the horror genre released since October 1, 2024, through September 30, 2025. As an added bonus, I’ll be adding a secondary review that may be somewhat related to the main review or slightly missed the countdown by inches. Follow along the countdown every day in October. Feel free to agree, disagree, or better yet, give me your own picks for your favorite horror movies of the year. Happy Halloween!

21. TERRIFIER 3 (2024)

Released on October 11, 2024, and streaming on Screambox from Cineverse and Bloody Disgusting!
Directed/Written by Damien Leone.
Check out the trailer here!!

Art the Clown is back and this time, he’s festive. When final girl Sienna (Lauren LaVera) arrives at her sister’s home for Christmas, Art the Clown awakens as well, bringing holly horror and gruesome carnage in his bag of tricks.

I fully acknowledge that TERRIFIER is this generation’s SAW. There is a group of viewers who grew up watching the terrifying clown dismember scores of people when the original TERRIFIER was prominently shown on Netflix. It was an audience who wouldn’t have seen it if it were not available on the popular streaming channel. And while horror fans knowledgeable knew about the evil clown from his memorable appearances in the anthology series ALL HALLOW’S EVE, many more were given a chance for the clown to nauseate and mutilate which made Art the Clown a global phenomenon. So, I understand why people were so stoked when I saw TERRIFIER 3 with a live audience at the Music Box in Chicago this past week. The ambulance parked outside of the theater for anyone who became too sick or shocked from the movie was a nice touch. BTW.

Personally, the first TERRIFIER was a good introduction to a character that was lacking in story but made up for it with scenes of grue and gore. My interest in the series widened after seeing TERRIFIER 2 as it introduced a likable protagonist in Sienna and actually told a decent, yet simple story—something the first film was lacking. So, my hopes were high that the third installment would show more growth from director/writer Damien Leone as a storyteller. There’s no denying his talent in the effects department, but Leone showed promise in telling an engaging story in the second one, so I was hoping for more growth in a third go at it.

Unfortunately, I feel TERRIFIER 3 is a regression in real storytelling as Leone falls back to the spectacle of gore and effects scenes of Art the Clown instead of moving along with a decent story to back it up. TERRIFIER 3 feels more like a showcase of gory kill scenes than an actual narrative and that is disappointing for me. Now, don’t go booing me yet. Leone does a fantastic job creating ten twenty-minute spurts of horror as evidenced by the impressive intro scene in TERRIFIER 3, as well as the chainsaw shower scene, the bar scene, and the mall Santa scene. These three sequences are by far the best moments in the movie as it allows Art the Clown’s character to shine while having him do some memorable acts of depravity. But three or four goppy effects scenes does not a movie make.

Attempting to thread a story through these gore scenes are quiet moments with Sienna coming to grips with the horrors she witnessed in the last film and bonding with her sister’s family. While Leone stumbled upon a gem of an actor with the stunning Lauren LaVera, these scenes lack punch and really drag the momentum down, especially after the raucous mayhem that occurs in the scenes prior. So, you find yourself zoning out of the story and simply waiting for the next appearance by Art. This isn’t a dreadful thing and lulls in the horror story after a kill often occur in these types of films, but the drop in energy is noticeably great, which unfortunately, skids the momentum to an absolute stop occasionally through the movie. This makes for a jarring experience as a viewer. Don’t get me wrong, LaVera is great and the best actor in the film, but the scenes where she confides with her sister are badly written and the ones she shares with her little niece are horribly cliched.

Now, back to the gore. It is epic. There are a few scenes that had me laughing with devilish glee. The shower scene alone, which by far is the highlight of the movie, depicts a chainsaw mutilation that anyone who has ever watched a TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE has always dreamed of seeing. If anything, this scene of utter decimation by power tool acts as a challenge to the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE series to up their game big time as any future film with a chainsaw wielding maniac will be compared to the destruction Art the Clown does in this movie. It truly is epic. As is the resurrection scene as a pair of police officers investigate a building where Art and his disfigured accomplice Victoria Heyes (played by Samantha Scaffidi) seem to have gone into a cocoon resting phase in between killing sprees. This scene really works in terms of building suspense and delivers a huge payoff. I was more impressed with this scene than most because it shows that Leone can not only film gore sequences, but he can really prolong the magic and draw out a scene dripping with tension.

The opener is another strong scene where the Santa motif is introduced, and Art pays a visit on an unsuspecting family acting like Santa Claus. While the scene has been hinted at in the trailer and is a direct lift from SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT, Leone manages to make this house siege pop with excitement as a little girl gets up in the middle of the night to find Art by the Christmas tree. Add in a bar scene where Art gets his Santa suit from a jolly (but not for long) Daniel Roebuck that is absolutely gleeful as Art doesn’t just get to spend time with Roebuck on screen, but the unforgettable Clint Howard as well. That’s a good chunk of the film dedicated to what are short films featuring Art the Clown performing his gory best in each scene.

But I feel TERRIFIER 3 doesn’t know when to quit. The climax scene is extremely long and unevenly paced. There is no reason this movie should be as long as it is. This final reel could have been cut by twenty minutes, and it would have been a tighter, more focused movie. By the time Sienna faces off with Art, we’ve already seen a shit-ton of blood and gore, but Leone attempts to make another spectacle out of it all, and it really feels unnecessary and anti-climactic as the film ends on a cliffhanger of sorts. Unfortunately, the audience this time has survived an endurance test to see how much gore they can endure. Having Sienna tied to a chair and forced to watch multiple murders is downright tedious by that point of the film.

I feel one of the biggest opportunities of the TERRIFIER franchise is that the series doesn’t have a Loomis character. A person who has experienced Art in the past and has lived to talk about it, offering up a sliver of backstory to Art the Clown and making the world of TERRIFIER feel bigger than it is. Gone is the iconic little creepy clown girl from TERRIFIER 2, which is inexplicable as the character became such a phenomenon. So, Victoria Heyes (played by Samantha Scaffidi) replaces her as his accomplice to his heinous acts. For me, I didn’t like this development as I feel Heyes would be much more effective as a Loomis-style character that guides the hero and provides some gravitas to the depths Art the Clown would go. It is just a weird path Heyes’ character takes as Art is the one who disfigured her and made her the monster she is.

By now, David Howard Thornton has his Art the Clown schtick down pat. He is a little hammier here, reacting cartoonishly to situations as he has before, but the mimicry and mime act reactions really are amped in TERRIFIER 3. This is a good thing as it makes Art funny as well as diabolical. The Art-centric humor seems to have turned up a notch in this third movie, which shows a nice development in Leone’s versatility as a director. I laughed quite a bit more with TERRIFIER 3 than in previous installments.

So yes, there is a lot to like in TERRIFIER 3, especially if you liked or loved the first two films. It is story lite—more so than the last film. There are hints at Sienna’s connections with Art and more about her own father, this time played by an almost unrecognizable Jason Patric. Other fun cameos include Spider One’s gal Krsy Fox, Tom Savini, and Expedition Bigfoot’s Bryce Johnson. These nods to other areas of the horror genre are nice, but let’s just hope it doesn’t go the kitschy route that the cameos went in the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series. I go to movies for a combination of things. I want to see something new. I want to see something thrilling. And I want a relevant story. So far, the TERRIFIER series has delivered in showing something new and thrilling, but the story has been light, and it was even lighter in TERRIFIER 3. It’s inevitable a TERRIFIER 4 is in the works. Let’s hope more attention to story is given in that one because there are only so many ways Art can mutilate a person before it gets boring.

Oh, and the theme song, “A Very Terrifier Christmas” is indeed an instant classic. So, there’s that.

Worth Noting: CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD (2025)

Released on May 9, 2025, and streaming on Shudder from RLJE Films!
Directed by Eli Craig.
Written by Carter Blanchard, Eli Craig, adapted from a book by Adam Cesare.
Check out the trailer here!!

Quinn (Katie Douglas) and her father (Aaron Abrams) move to a small town in middle America called Kettle Springs. The town has seen better days as the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory has recently shut down, causing many to lose their jobs and leave the area. This includes the town doctor which is a role Quinn’s father has chosen to fill, much to Quinn’s disdain for moving away from her life and friends from the coast. Almost immediately, Quinn takes up with a group of kids who have gained online popularity by posting YouTube videos, casting the town mascot, Frendo the Clown, as a serial killer. But soon enough, Quinn and her new friends find that the murderous Frendo is all too real and after them with all sorts of weapons of terror.

While nowhere near as ghastly or grotesque as the TERRIFIER series, CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD is a potent little slasher that hits all the right marks with a variety of kills, an assortment of weapons, annoying kids set up for slaughter, and a very scary clown. CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD is heavily influenced by SCREAM and mainstream self-aware horror like it as the kids comment that the experience is like being in a horror movie and the like. While I do find this type of meta-horror grating, thankfully, CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD only does this in small doses. There are other moments where kids scream and do things that no sane person would do, solely for the sake of a laugh or simply for something to fill a space with a throwaway line like “RUN!” or “FUCK.” I am of the school that believes less dialog is more. I had these screaming teens been a little less verbal about everything with their smart-assery, they would have been scores more likable and I would have been much more invested in the film itself.

That said, I don’t want to be a total old grump. CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD is a fun romp in the rows of corn with a very scary clown. It does a decent job of setting up the through-running theme of old versus young, with everyone in the town over eighteen being complete assholes to the kids. In fact, there really are no twenty-sometings in this town. Just middle-aged people and teens, which is weird. Still, the generational divide is something that is heavily addressed in the plot. Quinn is at the age when she is a rebellious teen. Her father is trying to be the cool dad, but finds himself worrying about his daughter, especially since she is getting into trouble with her new friends. The same kind of divide is addressed in the motivations of the killer, but I won’t really get into that here. Maybe a spoiler laden post sometime next week.

This was one of the few times that I had read the book prior to watching the movie. I know books allow for more depth into the subject matter. But I feel that a lot of the dire state of the small town in Adam Cesare’s book is glossed over in the movie in preference to having key players in the plot reminisce about better days. If looked at through a political lens, and it’s a lens I hate doing these days because it causes such ridiculous debate. Nevertheless, one might say this is a story about forward thinkers versus people who are just comfortable leaving things as they are. I’ll leave it at that. The allegory is there in the plot, but not so much as to beat you over the head with it. The book did a better job of showing how desperate times call for desperate measures like making yourself up like a clown and killing a bunch of snot-nosed kids.

Thankfully, the real focus is on the clown carnage and there is a whole hell of a lot of it. The clown uses all types of weaponry, from crossbows to chainsaws to axes to pitchforks. It made me long for the days when Jason would raid the toolshed and vary up his kills from one kid to the next with different cutlery. The Clown looks pretty creepy too with beady eyes, a thick brow, and a smile pulled back so far it looks like a grimace. Those with Coulrophobia—the fear of clowns, are given a lot of pants filling moments as the cornrows are endless and everywhere and at any time a clown could pop out of nowhere. While I could call the frights before they happened, I still found myself jumping a time or two at the way director Eli Craig (who also directed TUCKER & DALE VERSUS EVIL) set up the scene.

The comedy is haphazard. While the kids are sometimes quite annoying in the way they interact with one another, I can’t say they aren’t acting genuinely like kids. There are scenes where a line is given that plops like a turd. “When your dad tries to teach you to drive stick-shift, you need to listen to him!” is one of them. Or maybe it is that the lead actor, surely hired for her similarity to Jenna Ortega, just wasn’t able to see it. Sure, it’s a thought someone might have, but you just don’t say it aloud in a situation where a killer clown is after you. Then again, the scene highlighted in the trailer where the girls try to call the police officers, but don’t know how to dial on a rotary phone did make me laugh. It highlights that while the kids do a decent job of making fun of the adults here, the kids are just as dense as them at times. I think had the script balanced that divide a little more evenly, it would have been stronger.

Don’t expect vivisections or sloshing in a foot of blood in CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD. This is not that type of film and thankfully, this one doesn’t try to be another TERRIFIER. It’s much more like CHILDREN OF THE CORN meets an 80’s slasher with a lot of fun cat-and-mouse and of course, a couple of twists and turns to make it all feel a little more dangerous.

CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD is impressive mainstream slasher horror. It’s not the smartest or most original, but it does have enough flashy kills and unexpected turns to make it worth checking out.

The Best in Horror Countdown 2024-2025
#31 – GET AWAY (DARK MATCH)
#30 – PABRIK GULA (#MISSINGCOUPLE)
#29 – YULE LOG 2: BRANCHIN’ OUT (THE LAST VIDEO STORE)
#28 – FREWAKA (THE SURRENDER)
#27 – FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES (V/H/S/BEYOND)
#26 – ALMA AND THE WOLF (CUSTOM)
#25 – LOOKY-LOO (THE CREEP TAPES)
#24 – DANGEROUS ANIMALS (THE MAN IN THE WHITE VAN)
#23 – THE MONKEY (THE DAMNED)
#22 – THE DEVIL AND THE DAYLONG BROTHERS (THE SEVERED SUN)
#21 – TERRIFIER 3 (CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD)