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After a month in cinemas, Terrifier 3 (Damien Leone) is dominating the box office, earning over $60 million worldwide from its $2 million budget. The franchise has amassed a large cult following, with many placing the villain, Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton), in the same hall of fame as Freddy and Jason. Art is undeniably scary, largely due to Thornton’s performance, but some credit the horror to the veil of misogyny draped over the franchise.
Violence and misogyny are not new in horror, and the Terrifier films check both these boxes. While it is undeniable that Art is a brutal killer, the difference in how he kills and tortures women is evident. The women in these movies are killed more gratuitously and degradingly than the male victims, with an increased focus on their bodies. Throughout the trilogy, Art is seen writing words in blood that have specifically gendered connotations and are used against women as a means of degradation.
The main issue is not that Art hates women but how the film portrays this hatred. In the first movie, it is briefly implied that Art has mother issues. However, this is never mentioned again and has nothing to do with his kills throughout the franchise. Some examples of horror films that include gendered motives are Black Christmas (1974) and Maniac (1980). In these movies, the killers target women and treat them in derogatory ways. In Maniac, the killer’s poor relationship with his mother is the reason he kills women. The main difference between how these films tackle misogynistic kills versus Art’s is that Maniac does not feel like it hates women. Instead, the killers hold the hatred, and the audience is encouraged to cheer for the survivors, not for the killer.
This is partly due to how the female characters are written. In Black Christmas, for instance, Jess (Olivia Hussey) deals with many issues such as balancing her relationship and her career, as well as an unwanted pregnancy. As a fully written character, she has more humanity and demands engagement from the audience as they learn about her. In Terrifier 3, the main character, Sienna (Lauren LaVera), is not given as much of that humanity. Although the film attempts to show the traumatic effects of past films, the conversations and scenes between the kills are not as engaging and feel more like a means of getting to the killing scenes. It is also worth noting that these attempts to show Sienna’s humanity are solely through how she has already been attacked by the killer, rather than as an independent person.
Overall, Leone has done a successful job in his creation of Art and the films as a whole and to say that anyone who enjoys these films should be placed on a watchlist is a stretch. However, these films’ portrayal and treatment of their (poorly) written women should definitely not be overlooked.
