Even though /Film owner Chris Evangelista called 2016's “The Terror” “bullshit,” he at least acknowledged that Damien Leone's ultra-low-budget slasher was “loaded with incredibly practical gore.” This is probably Leone's strongest point in subsequent sequels, with both 2022's “Terrifier 2” and 2024's “Terrifier 3” taking the brutality to a level that defies explanation. As /Film's Jacob Hall wrote in his review of “Terrorist 3,” “The greatest credit that can be given to the effects team on 'Terrifier 3' is that it's often unclear how they execute these sequences.”
While the merits of Leone's ultra-violence may be up for debate, his knack for creating practical effects simply isn't. The man knows how to create a sickeningly gory sequence, and he clearly hasn't lost a step since his first film, “The Terrorist,” featured a woman being cut in half from the pelvis up. For “Terrifier 2,” the director used every means at his disposal, creating murder scenes using highly unlikely (and highly disgusting) ingredients such as sausage casings filled with fat and powdered milk to make the blood less transparent. Leone's favorite kill is the infamous Allie (Casey Hartnett) murder scene, in which Art completely decimates a young girl by skinning her alive and leaving her somehow conscious body for her mother to discover – a scene that required days of filming and a series of low-budget films with practical effects to achieve.
While the scene itself is as vomit-inducing as you can imagine, the level of technical wizardry on display in it is undeniable. Leone and his small crew spent five days in a barn, where they built a set for Allie's bedroom and created an obscene sequence with a mix of makeup effects and a life-size mannequin that Leone created for the sickening final shot. But even Allie's murder scene wasn't as brilliant as another death in “Terrifier 2,” in which Leone used a prophylactic measure to donate a very specific type of blood.
Killing Terrifier 2 using a condom
Damien Leone has been preparing for the Terrorist films his whole life, revealing the Fright Hour podcast where he was “doing his makeup in the middle of the night” as a child, adding: “You know, everybody's asleep, it's school night, and I'm melting clay on the stove, to make a clay head or something like that.” These skills, honed throughout Leone's life, allowed him to realize his dream of creating slasher films that went far beyond what Hollywood usually allows, filled with realistic gore that is the result of truly brilliant engineering.
Lauren LaVera, who stars as Sienna in the second and third “Terrorist” films, was asked about her favorite kill in the series by Dexerto and he highlighted some of Leone's inspired design work. The actress mentioned Brooke's (Kailey Hyman) death in “Terrifier 2,” in which Art pours acid on a defenseless teenager before disemboweling her with a spiked club. The coup de grâce comes when a demented clown rips out his victim's still beating heart. According to LaVera, it was the kill that impressed her most while working on “Terrifier 2.” “I really liked Brooke's murder,” she said, adding:
“When they threw acid in her face, you have to remember that it was a very low-budget film and her face must have been bubbling. So they used a condom to make the face look like it was bubbling, and I just thought it was hilarious and brilliant. They used something so cheap and it worked. I was simply enchanted by the work of these artists.
Damien Leone achieves another feat of low-budget engineering
For those interested in how Damien Leone used a condom to simulate a woman's burning face on acid, the director posted photos on Twitter/X showing the practical effects and makeup used to create the brutal scene.
While Leone doesn't directly mention the condom itself, the director reportedly blew through tubes to enlarge the condom and punched holes in the mask he constructed for Brooke's face. The end result was another feat of low-tech engineering that looked much more advanced than it actually was. Of course, once you know how it was done, you can totally see how the condom was used by watching the last scene again.
There will no doubt be more stories to come about Leone's craftsmanship, “Terrifier 3” continues to make audiences vomit and run away from theaters. As the threequel is even more challenging than its predecessor, pushing the boundaries of what you thought was possible when it comes to splatter filmmaking, we can't wait to discover what unlikely ingredients the director used this time around.
