The Disappointing Truth About Terrifier 3's 'Extended Cut'

Damien Leone's "Terrifier 3," just like its immediate 2022 predecessor, is one of the year's great success stories. Made for only $2 million, "Terrifier 3" has earned a surprising $45.9 million at the box office so far. This is astonishing, given that "Terrifier 3" is hardly a broadly appealing, four-quadrant crowd-pleaser. Indeed, it's a gruesomely violent poem to nihilism and death, starring a demonic clown (Art the Clown, played by David Howard Thornton) who merrily dismembers, decapitates, and sometimes eats a plethora of victims. The "Terrifier" movies are among the goriest one might ever see, and that reputation is bringing horror fans out in droves. 

The plot of "Terrifier 3" continues directly from "Terrifier 2," following Sienna (Lauren LaVera) and her brother Jonathan (Elliott Fullam) as they continue to flee the mayhem wrought by Art the Clown. Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi) survived the events of the first "Terrifier," but became demonically possessed, and serves as Art's terrifying accomplice in "Terrifier 3." That, however, is where easy descriptions end, as "Terrifier 3," on a scene-by-scene basis, becomes a little difficult to follow. Characters teleport from location to location without much explanation as to what they're doing there. For certain sequences, it feels like scenes of exposition may be missing. 

In a new interview with EW, Leone noted that a director's cut of "Terrifier 3" may be in the works, and one might expect a longer edit to provide those missing moments. However, Leone explained that the lack of connective material was actually an artistic choice on his part. 

In short, don't expect a director's cut of "Terrifier 3" to: 

1. Be too much gorier or contain any more than one extra-bloody scene that Leone cut from the theatrical release. 
2. Be any clearer in terms of storytelling. 

Leone knew that fans were aching to see, for instance, how a character retrieved a specific sword late in the film, as it seems to manifest out of nowhere in the current cut. Leone also intuited that fans might want to see more scenes of Art the Clown at a certain house party. He was sorry to say that those scenes were never actually made, saying: 

"A lot of [fans], they're expecting the extended cut to be scenes that they imagined were missing. [...] But no, we did not shoot those scenes. So the 'missing scenes' they want to see [are] Sienna going to the Terrifier to retrieve her sword. They want to see what happened with Jonathan, or they think something happened with Art the Clown at the Beta Bash, the big house party. [... But] we didn't shoot those scenes. There's nothing there that would be in the extended cut."

Why did Leone leave out the connective tissue? It seems he was aiming to make his film feel a little dizzying, dreamlike, and ambiguous. Art the Clown is a supernatural being, so it stands to reason that he would be able to manifest wherever he can do the most damage and inspire the most misery. Leone admitted taking cues from a famously ambiguous filmmaker, saying: 

"I love the ambiguity. I hate spelling everything out to the audience. [...] I said this a long time ago, that I wanted to approach 'Terrifier,' especially once I got into 'Terrifier 2,' in a very David Lynch type of way."

Lynch, the director of "Eraserhead" and "Inland Empire," often dallied with abstraction and dream logic. "Terrifier 3" was merely meant to have a similar flavor. 

Leone was quick to say that he wasn't comparing his own films to the works of David Lynch, but that he was very inspired by Lynch's nightmarish tendencies. He liked stories where, he said, "nothing was spelled out." The story "gaps," then, were deliberate. 

So if there isn't any additional exposition, and there's no additional gore, what exactly would an extended cut of "Terrifier 3" contain? As it turns out, Leone merely wanted to include more light dialogue scenes between the beleaguered human characters, cut mostly for time and/or pacing. He liked the scenes featuring conversations between Sienna, and her young niece, Gabbie (Antonella Rose). He said: 

"A lot of the stuff that's missing are these really nice human moments with Sienna and the family. [...] There's a lot of great scenes with Sienna and Gabbie that I had to cut out, and I appreciate. I didn't have to; it really just made their bond so much stronger."

There was also one gory moment Leone cut, but not because it was too disturbing. He just felt that the finale of "Terrifier 3" could be tighter, so he shaved off a notable violent act to keep the movie moving. It was, he said: 

"[... A] great scene. I won't spoil it, but there's a great scene between Victoria and Gabbie in the finale. Really sadistic. But it was just padding out the finale too much, and I felt like we were going to start losing people."

The theatrical cut of "Terrifier 3" already runs 125 minutes, so such excisions may have been wise. Leone also mentioned that a few scenes he cut from "Terrifier 3" will not be included in any potential director's cut of the film ... because he wants to recycle them for "Terrifier 4." Time will tell how much clowning we'll get to see.