Terrifier 3 Director Damien Leone Explains Pushing Boundaries in a Tasteful Way

ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Terrifier 3 director Damien Leone about the violent horror movie. Leone discussed being provocative, slasher runtimes, and much more. The movie is now playing in theaters nationwide.

“After surviving Art the Clown’s Halloween massacre, Sienna and her brother are struggling to rebuild their shattered lives. As the holiday season approaches, they try to embrace the Christmas spirit and leave the horrors of the past behind. But just when they think they’re safe, Art the Clown returns, determined to turn their holiday cheer into a new nightmare. The festive season quickly unravels as Art unleashes his twisted brand of terror, proving that no holiday is safe,” says the Terrifier 3 synopsis.

Tyler Treese: Congrats on Terrifier 3. You’ve done it again. You’ve disgusted me and made me just laugh with joy throughout. You get right into it with this film. Harming children is a line that a lot of people find taboo, but I love that you’re not afraid of it. I also love it in the film since it just signals that nobody is safe. If we’re not being provocative, then why are we making art? But I’d love to get your point of view on that and why you are willing to go into spaces where some people would just back off and say, “No way.”

Damien Leone: Yeah, man, it has to be genuine. It can’t be disingenuous to the Art the Clown character. When I decided to make this a Christmas film, it’s a child’s holiday, and he’s definitely gonna interact with a lot of kids. When I wrote this character, when I created him, I created the most vile, sadistic character that I could ever imagine. To me, it just would be disingenuous that he wouldn’t harm a child. It just doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t have any code that he lives by. He doesn’t have lines he won’t cross.

It’s the same thing when he pissed people off when he pulled out a gun. People saying, “Oh, that’s the slasher code you just broke. You can’t do that.” He doesn’t live by any code. He’s despicable. So it was the same with this film. Now, having said that, as an artist, I think there’s lines that I won’t cross in terms of execution, in terms of what I will show the audience. There are things that I think are very off-putting even for me. So when I’m writing these scripts maybe I’ll write something really horrific, and then I’ll say, “No, no, no, I gotta pull back maybe three steps here, because that’s too far.” I don’t wanna turn off the audience to a large degree. I don’t want to alienate half the audience. My personal sort of goal or experiment for me as the writer-director is, “Can I maintain a level of sort of mass accessibility but at the same time keep pushing the boundary and showing the audience something that they aren’t gonna see necessarily in an R-rated studio film?”

I think that being provocative and a little dangerous excites the audience. People wanna see. Listen, we know this is fantasy, right? We know it’s all fake. We’re not turning into serial killers here. You can see these things and be okay at the end of the day, but at the same time, you don’t want to push it too far to a level of extreme bad taste. So even though we touched upon a lot of taboo subjects and Terrifier 3, I went about it in sort of the most tasteful way I could, if that makes sense. I’m sure for some people, it’s still gonna be very off-putting, but it could have been way worse.

It’s very funny to use the word tasteful, but I do agree. One thing you do well within Terrifier 3, and you do it a couple of times, is just having violence take place off-screen and using that really effectively. I’d love to know your process for that because there is this desire of horror fans to see every single kill in every single detail, but sometimes taking it away and just seeing the aftermath is just as effective, if not more.

Sure. Absolutely. Well, we do that, especially, I think it’s the most impactful in the first 10 minutes of this film, which is basically a cold open. Iit’s sort of its own short film. I wanted to reintroduce the audience to Art the Clown as if they’d never met him before. Because a lot of times in franchises, by the time you get to a part three, you’re very comfortable with the killer. You’re excited to see the killer. You’re not afraid of the killer. You’re basically rooting for the killer. I didn’t want that to be the case with Art the Clown. I didn’t want to fall into that trap. So I wanted to present a really suspenseful, creepy, disturbing, sadistic opening where it’s like, “Oh my God. He’s still unpredictable. We still shouldn’t feel comfortable with this character.”

There’s an off-screen kill in the opening. Again, we’re playing with taboo subjects, so I didn’t want the audience to see it. But in a lot of regards, and this is not the M.O. of Terrifier as a franchise. The M.O. usually is more is the key. Excess, right? Everything with Terrifier is excess to the point where you get numb eventually. You see so much gore. I wanted to go in the opposite direction, once as a filmmaker, as a personal challenge for myself to see, can I make a sequence that’s as effective, where you’re just using sound effects and you’re just, it’s only what you imagine is happening behind closed doors. Could that be as disturbing as if I showed this happening? Because that is the case many times. Less is more what the audience creates in their head is sometimes way more effective than anything I could show. We relied on all sound design basically for that scene. I think it worked. I mean, the gasps that I heard in the screening at Fantastic Fest in that sequence was all the validation I needed. That scene played very well.

One cool element of Terrifier 3, and it really helps make it feel like a true trilogy, is that Samantha Scaffidi returns. She’s been in all three, and she really just gets to play a little freak in this film and goes all out. I know you’ve worked with her three times now, but how was it seeing how into it she was into going all out and being weird? She’s used wonderfully here.

She’s so wonderful. Probably, one of the most exciting aspects of [Terrifier 3] was her character and the just drastically new direction that we took her character in. It was exciting for me to give her the opportunity to really play something different and exciting for me to watch what she was gonna bring to it as an actor. Because I always wanted to give [her more to do]. Samantha’s so talented. She’s bold and fearless. That’s one of my favorite qualities of her is how fearless she is. She had to be really fearless in this role for a few scenes and very vulnerable, like more vulnerable than she’s ever been before in a movie. But thankfully, we trust each other. So she felt comfortable going to some of these really dark and twisted places.

It was also cool because it’s something fresh within the genre. She starts out as the hopeful final girl in the original Terrifier. Then by the end, she’s this horribly disfigured, mutilated, insane killer herself. You don’t know if you’re ever gonna see her again. Then I brought her back for the end of Terrifier 2, and she becomes this pivotal sort of pawn in regards to how Art the Clown is reintroduced into our reality. Not only that, now she’s possessed by the entity that is the little pale girl, and now she’s living in the flesh. So it was a completely different character for her to play now. It was also my opportunity to create a villain that’s verbal, right? I’m known for the silent killer, and now she’s just as sick and twisted as Art, but she’s got a voice. So it was cool to find that voice as well. It just, it just brought a whole new layer to this film that’s very fresh. It’s nothing seen in the other two films.

You’ve already been open about Terrifier 4. Terrifier 3’s ending definitely leads to where that’s gonna go. I was just curious where you are with that? Are you working on a script right now or just ideas?

No, so when I wrote part two, I knew what the end of this franchise was. So, then it just became a matter of, “Well, how many puzzle pieces do I need to get from here to there?” So it should just be one more movie unless it turns into something too big again. Because nobody could deal with like a two-and-a-half hour slasher film. It’s just too much to ask of people. So, I mean, if it gets out of control, who knows where it’s gonna go?

It wasn’t even my intention to really announce that there was gonna be a part four. The way that happened was we were at the Fantastic Fest screening. It was like 2:30 in the morning. We did a Q&A afterwards, and now I’m in a room with people who have eyes in their head. They’ve just seen the end of Terrifier 3, clearly it’s the most blatant Empire Strikes Back cliffhanger ending. Like, there’s gonna be another one.

So the person asked me, is there gonna be more? I’m like, “Well, of course, there’s gonna be more.” I would never do that to the audience. Like, how can you leave the audience there? Then next day it’s like, “Damian Leone Announces Terrifier 4,” “Terrifier 4 Greenlit.” This, that. I’m like, “Oh my God. Let’s just get through Terrifier 3.” So, yeah, I mean, there is. You will know the end of this franchise. It is a like concrete solid sort of ending. When you see it, you’ll know what it is. You’ll know when this thing is put to bed for a while, at least.

I mean, we’ve opened up the door to the supernatural, so I could always figure out a way to bring Art the Clown back if I wanted to. But I want to have a solid franchise, a saga that I could tell with a beginning, middle, and an end. You know what it is. You could walk away feeling satisfied. I don’t want to just kind of get lost in the woods and you just meandering and kind of fall into like the category of just diminishing returns, and you’re just tarnishing everything that’s come before it, or characters who you thought should have played a major part, really had nothing to do in the grand scheme of things. It’s like, “Well, why did I invest all that emotion, all that time and energy into what came before it?” So I don’t wanna run into that trap, which happens to a lot of franchises. So, I think maybe one more film and that’ll really tell the story that’ll put an end to the saga for a while anyway.

I think why people respond so much is this franchise really is your baby, and it has your voice. You mentioned the length, that a two-and-a-half hour slasher film doesn’t work. This film is shorter than Terrifier 2, so I was just curious what lessons you learned from the second film that you were able to apply in Terrifier 3?

I don’t know if they’re really lessons. I think I learned more lessons after part one. I knew what part one was. Part one’s really just a showcase for Art the Clown, right? Very simplistic. It was special effects. It was Art the Clown. It was like, “As the audience, do you accept this character? Is it worth even pursuing further?” Clearly, it was. So then, when I started crafting part two, it was, let’s introduce lore. Now let’s introduce a worthy adversary, a final girl that you could really get behind and root for. A hero that’s gonna carry this franchise.

I’m happy with what Terrifier 2 is. I’m happy with the length of it, but what wasn’t working for a lot of people was the length. It was too much for just a mass audience. Especially now we’re living in TikTok era. 2 hours, 18 minutes, which is the runtime of Terrifier 2, is a lot to ask of the audience. So I don’t think it was a mistake, so to speak. That was just genuinely the movie, the story I wanted to tell. But I don’t wanna double down on that now and say, “Well, you didn’t like 2 hours, 18 minutes. Here’s 2 hours, 40 minutes. Deal with it.” That’s not what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to make this as accessible for people while not losing what’s important to the franchise. So, that’s the reason why it came in at now 2 hours. I think it’s 2 hours and 5 minutes.

So it’s like two hours, not including credits. But this could have been longer. Again, my original cut was like 2 hours and 20 minutes, and I had to just cut out like five or six scenes because I really didn’t want to deliver that 2 hour, 18-minute movie again because it’s a lot to ask. So, again, it doesn’t mean I won’t make a two-and-a-half-hour movie if that’s genuinely the story I want to tell, and I don’t feel like it’s dragging. I’ve spoken to people before. You’ll hear people say, “Oh, there’s all this filler in these movies that could be cut out,” or it’s “unnaturally long.” I don’t think that’s a fair criticism.

I think that they’re underestimating or they’re not realizing what’s padding these runtimes isn’t the stuff in between that you think is dragging. It’s the big Art the Clown set pieces that make these movies unorthodox, and that adds to the longer runtime. Everything else, if you took it out, it would be just as long as the “filler,” so to speak, that’s in your typical slasher movie.

Your typical slasher movie is an hour and 20 minutes, an hour and 30 minutes, and your killer’s only in the movie for five minutes, like seven minutes. The kill scenes add up to about three minutes of the entire movie. You know what I mean? So you probably have more filler and more drama in your typical 80-minute slasher than you do in Terrifier 2. It’s just there are so many big scenes with Art the Clown where he’s toying with his victims for four minutes, where he’s killing somebody for four minutes. You don’t want just one kill. You want a bunch of kills. That’s what this franchise has become known for. So again, it’s a very unorthodox slasher film, and I think it gets unjustly criticized for its runtime.

Tyler Treese

Tyler Treese is ComingSoon and SuperHeroHype's Editor-in-Chief. An experienced entertainment journalist, his work can be seen at Sherdog, Fanbyte, Rock Paper Shotgun, and more. When not watching the latest movies, Treese enjoys mixed martial arts and playing with his Shiba Inu, Kota.