Terrifier 3 Ending Explained: Blood Red Christmas

This article contains massive spoilers for “Terrifier 3.”

The central ethos of filmmaker Damien Leone’s “Terrifier” films involves a combination of profanity and subversion. In other words, anything goes, especially when you least expect it to. That guiding principle has been present as far back as the first, non-canon appearances of Art the Clown, initially played by Leone’s friend Mike Giannelli in the “Terrifier” short film that ended up being part of the anthology movie “All Hallows’ Eve” from 2013. Even though Art was recast with actor David Howard Thornton for the first proper “Terrifier” film in 2016, the concept remained: here was a slasher movie villain who didn’t play by the rules.

Where most prior slasher villains were either completely silent and emotionless or very chatty and expressive, Art was somehow both. Where, in most other slashers, a silent covenant exists between the filmmaker and audience which assumes that a “Final Girl” will rise to the challenge of (temporarily) defeating the killer and that this killer will only use sharp and blunt objects to do his business, Art pulled an Indiana Jones and whipped out a pistol, dispatching one Final Girl with horrific brevity and brutally mutilating the character who took her place. 2022’s “Terrifier 2” continued this game of zigging where most would’ve expected a zag, the film being one of the longest slasher movies ever made (138 minutes!) that introduces hints of a larger, deeper mythology surrounding Art, his goals, and his origins, but without providing many answers.

This month’s “Terrifier 3” provides these answers, and then some. Leone once again takes the series in a new direction, bringing back several characters from the previous films while changing the setting from Halloween night to Christmas Eve. In addition to making explicit what was only inferred or hinted at in “Terrifier 2,” Leone rather ingeniously recontextualizes the character of Art (if not the films themselves) without losing that perverse sense of shock or surprise that keeps drawing curious audiences in. Although this film, like “Terrifier 2,” ends on a cliffhanger, it’s a testament to Leone’s clarity and consistency of vision that a potential “Terrifier 4” could literally take things anywhere next.

“Terrifier 3” begins, appropriately enough, with a stalk n’ kill sequence featuring Art (dressed as Santa Claus) invading the home of a young couple and their two children. In addition to establishing this movie’s Yuletide setting, it’s a scene that is as brutal as it is random, reminding audiences of Art’s modus operandi both in spirit and in function for a very good reason to be addressed later. For now, Leone flashes back to five years earlier, where Art, at the conclusion of “Terrifier 2,” had been decapitated and his head was “reborn” through his prior victim, the defaced Victoria Heyes (Samantha Scaffidi), the sole survivor of the first “Terrifier” who was institutionalized after subsequently committing a murder herself. As a result of all this, not only is Art’s head reunited with his still-animate body, but Victoria seems to be permanently possessed by an evil force, her last cries for help heard by a nurse before he’s violently murdered by a resurrected Art.

As Leone stated on his commentary track for “Terrifier 2,” his original idea for the shocking cliffhanger of that film was that Victoria was now possessed by the spirit of the Little Pale Girl (Amelie McLain), the demonic companion who followed Art around and seemed to have taken the form of one of his (or at least someone’s) prior victims, a girl murdered years ago at the Terrifier carnival attraction where “Terrifier 2” reached its climax. 

Although the newly possessed Victoria has a few of the same mannerisms as the Little Pale Girl did, she appears to be her own demonic character: for one thing, she can talk just fine, spouting various epithets that would make Regan MacNeil blush. For another, she appears to literally and figuratively get off on the violence Art perpetrates; she’s his audience as well as his accomplice. As the two make their way back to Art’s hideout inside an abandoned home (which may or may not have been the site of grisly child murders several years prior), it’s clear that they have some particular agenda, as both Victoria and Art patiently wait motionless for five whole years before springing to action again.

Meanwhile, Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) has tried to move on from Art’s attack on Halloween night five years ago, but it hasn’t been easy. She’s been in and out of several institutions, and although she’s on medication, she’s still periodically seeing the ghosts of her dead friends, including Brooke (Kailey Hyman), who appears as a bitter, bloody corpse, “An American Werewolf in London”-style. This Christmas, she’s finally getting a chance to try and return to normalcy with some of her extended family, moving in with her late mother’s sister, Jess (Margaret Anne Florence), her uncle, Greg (Bryce Johnson), and her cousin, Gabbie (Antonella Rose). Gabbie and Sienna have a special bond, with Gabbie essentially worshipping Sienna as her hero, despite the older girl’s recent troubles.

Sadly, those troubles have not completely gone away for Sienna, much to the consternation of not just Jess and Greg (who secretly discuss what to do about Sienna going forward) but also her younger brother Jonathan (Elliott Fullam), the other survivor of the Art murder spree five years ago, who is making a go of it on his own at college. Sienna begins to believe that Art is still alive and is making a beeline for her, a suspicion which we’re shown is right on the money, as Art makes various killings and procures a Santa suit for himself (implying that the opening kill sequence takes place around this time). As such, she confronts Jonathan with letters that he’d written to her immediately after the attacks five years ago, which state his belief that they needed to kill the Little Pale Girl (or, at least, the demonic spirit that she represents) before she was able to jump into a host body and possess it. Sienna speculates that the demon must now be inhabiting Victoria Heyes and that both it and Art are out to eliminate her due to her being somehow chosen by the forces of Good as their enemy.

This “chosen one” aspect of Sienna’s character stems back to her history with her father, Michael (Jason Patric), seen here in flashback interacting with a younger Sienna (Luciana Elisa Quinonez). Michael, a professional artist, did a lot of work on comic book tales involving strong male heroes and buxom female victims, and thus young Sienna made him promise to draw her a female hero character who was stronger than any other character he’d ever created. He did so, creating the angel warrior who an older Sienna dressed up as for Halloween in the previous movie. Upon gifting Sienna the painting, however, a supernatural force possessed both Sienna and Michael, making Sienna marked by these supernatural powers while Michael is temporarily not himself — it’s stated in both “Terrifier 2” and this film that he became abusive while suffering from increasingly upsetting visions, some of which involved Art.

As Sienna’s visions move past just her memories and tap into some larger sense of the Beyond, it’s clear that she and her family are unwitting pawns in some cosmic war between Good and Evil. Through her father’s sketches, Jonathan’s letters, and her own growing understanding of her powers and her destiny, Sienna learns that the sword that Michael made for her has been imbued with powerful magic: it is the only thing that can kill Art, and the Demon, and it cannot kill Sienna (hence her healing from her otherwise mortal wound when Art stabbed her with it in “Terrifier 2”). In one vision, Sienna sees the sword being forged by a demon who is held on a leash by an angel, implying that the relationship between Good and Evil is part eternal conflict, part checks and balances. In any case, Jonathan agrees that Sienna should go back to the Terrifier attraction to retrieve the sword from where she’d buried it five years ago. Sienna does so, wrapping it up as a Christmas gift and placing it surreptitiously beneath the tree in Jess’ home.

After Art gets done making merry, sewing death and discord on his path to Sienna (murdering a mall full of parents and children, killing a true crime podcaster and her boyfriend at Jonathan’s college, etc.), he and Victoria finally end up at Jess and Greg’s, luring Sienna to their holiday party by impersonating the couple’s voices and insinuating that they’re going to re-commit and/or murder their niece. Sienna is taken by surprise by the deadly duo and bound and gagged to a chair while having to witness their horrific deeds: Greg’s corpse is turned into a garish mockery of Jesus while Victoria, wearing a crown of thorns with her face painted in Art makeup, tortures a still-alive Jess to death with live rats forced down her throat. For the pièce de résistance, Art reveals a decaying, mostly eaten severed head, which Victoria claims is the remains of Gabbie.

As Art and Victoria seemingly remove what remains of Sienna’s loved ones, support system, and sanity, the demon inside Victoria reveals that the entire game they’ve been playing is for Art to commit as many atrocities (personal and otherwise) as possible so as to allow the demon to possess Sienna. In doing so, Evil will fully triumph over Good, as the chosen champion of the angels will have been officially defeated. The demon attempts to push its way inside Sienna, but the girl still has enough of her strength to fight it off for now. Anticipating this, Art and Victoria reveal that they have a contingency plan: Gabbie is still alive, as shown by her being brought into the living room of horrors by Art. This means that, tragically, the rat-eaten severed head belongs to poor Jonathan, as Victoria makes clear by placing the dead boy’s signature eyeglasses on the skull.

After Art holds a knife to Gabbie’s throat and poor Sienna cannot break free of her bonds, it seems that Evil is about to take the win. Yet the two cousins have an ace in the hole: Gabbie, a consummate snoop, already peeked inside the present Sienna snuck under the tree, and having read Sienna’s diary earlier, knows all about the significance of the sword. So, appealing to Art’s sense of mayhem, she insists that Sienna open her Christmas present before both of them are murdered. Art and Victoria happily agree, only with the proviso that Art smashes Sienna’s hands to a pulp before she can open the present. Sienna takes that deal, however, knowing that it’ll allow her to open the box and retrieve the sword. As soon as she does, she attacks Victoria first, swiftly decapitating the girl. She then goes after Art, and the two foes have a brutal, no-holds-barred duel to the death.

Just as Sienna impales Art with the magic sword, the clown’s eyes turning pale white as an indication of his power being depleted, Gabbie is shocked to discover that Victoria’s blood has flowed in a particular pattern onto the floor, its own magical properties suddenly opening a portal to Hell. Having to make a choice between finishing off Art and rescuing Gabbie from the swiftly opening portal, Sienna rushes to Gabbie’s aid, handing her the sword to help her hang on. Sadly, it’s not enough, and both Gabbie and the magic sword are swallowed up by the Hell portal (a climax that echoes the similarly eerie, bleak conclusion of John Carpenter’s “Prince of Darkness”). A distraught Sienna, seeing that Art has escaped in addition to losing her beloved cousin and her weapon, silently vows that she’s going to find Gabbie, wherever she’s gone.

While Sienna wallows in defeat, Art is shown to not exactly be in tip-top shape, either, as he dejectedly waits in the cold, snowy Christmas night for a bus to pick him up. In addition to a chatty driver, the bus has only one passenger, a woman (Jen Ayer Drake) who is reading a horror novel entitled “The 9th Circle.” Leone fans will recognize this title as the name of the other short film that Art appeared in pre-“Terrifier,” which also became part of “All Hallows’ Eve.” In the same way that other appearances of Art have followed a character being scared or vulnerable, the bus stops to pick up the clown as its next passenger, but Art doesn’t quite seem like his old self anymore. He sits motionless, with his eyes closed, for a good long while. As the woman and driver begin to get increasingly uncomfortable in his presence, the Clown pulls out his trusty horn and squeaks it as he opens his eyes, implying that he’s ready to get back to his mission of murder.

What “Terrifier 3” does for the series is provide a general template for the series’ lore and structure going forward. It’s clear that Art, as a pawn of Evil, is intent on killing with as much brutality and perversity as possible to break Sienna’s soul, to allow her to be fully defeated and possessed by the demon. It’s also clear that Sienna isn’t about to let the loss of Gabbie slide, and, of course, she needs her sword back. Yet there are undeniably many unanswered questions, too: was that severed head really Jonathan’s, or just another nasty trick of Art and the demon? Can Sienna quest for her revenge without being impeded by the forces of authority? After all, we’re told that she was institutionalized (as opposed to incarcerated) thanks to Jonathan’s defense of her, and if he’s no longer around to corroborate her side of the story, then all of Art’s dirty deeds may fall on her shoulders. Finally, how will Sienna rescue Gabbie? And will the next “Terrifier” film be an epic, final-battle-style conclusion, or another entry that further expands the lore and raises the stakes? As the song says, you’d better watch out for “Terrifier 4,” because “Terrifier 3” only reconfirms that in this franchise, anything goes.