'Terrifier 3' spoilers! Director unpacks ending and Art the Clown's gnarliest kills

Spoiler alert! The following post discusses important plot points and the ending of “Terrifier 3” so beware if you haven’t seen it yet.

“Terrifier 3” lives up to the popular horror franchise’s penchant for bloody kills featuring its main man, Art the Clown, but also delivers a bit more lore and also a literal cliffhanger.

Set five years after 2022’s “Terrifier 2,” the Christmas-themed threequel features heroine Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) being released from a mental health facility to spend time with her aunt and uncle. However, she’s still psychologically troubled by her last run-in with the demonically superpowered Art, where this angelic warrior came back from the dead thanks to a magic sword and sliced his head off. He got better and is now back in Miles County – and dressed in a Santa suit and working with Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi), a disfigured survivor from the first “Terrifier” now possessed by an evil entity – to hunt down Sienna. Naturally he leaves a path of blood and dismemberments in his wake.

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Writer/director Damien Leone introduces Sienna’s father Michael (Jason Patric), who’s seen in flashbacks with his young daughter to give depth to her warrior angel side, and nods to the greater mythology. That was one of the “big polarizing aspects” of the last film and “a lot of people just felt there were just so many unanswered questions,” Leone says. “By design, I'm approaching this more like a miniseries. These aren't just one-offs. So it's just a matter of how much information can I squeeze in before I get to that final confrontation that I have in mind with Art and Sienna.”

Leone breaks down the “Terrifier 3” ending, a new addition to franchise lore and why there’s no post-credits scene.

What happens in the ending of ‘Terrifier 3’?

In the final act, Victoria and Art confront Sienna at her family’s place. They murder her aunt and uncle, threaten young cousin Gabbie (Antonella Rose) and reveal the decapitated skull of Sienna’s younger brother Jonathan (Elliott Fullam), who’s seemingly been killed offscreen. As Victoria tries to possess her, Sienna gets a hold of her magic sword, slicing Art’s throat and stabbing it deep into Victoria. That makes a pit to hell open up in the living room, leaving Gabbie hanging on for dear life. Sienna’s unable to save her, as she falls and the pit closes, and Art gets away on a bus out of town.

Putting Sienna in another precarious situation “really raises her stakes, especially since we opened up the door to the supernatural and heaven and hell and all these wonderful mythic sort of themes,” says Leone, who’s confirmed a fourth “Terrifier” is coming. “I think now she has to figure out a way to rescue Gabbie. And what bigger stakes than to actually put Sienna into hell?”

What’s the gnarliest kill in the new ‘Terrifier’?

Leone’s upped Art’s already impressive murder game in the third film, with a brutal slaying of a family in the bloody opening and a memorable shower massacre where a college dude gets viciously chainsawed in half, butt first. Some of the ultraviolence leans cartoonish because of Art’s humorous mannerisms, but while the horror villain isn’t known for killing children, there are a couple of scenes that break that unwritten rule, including one where Art blows up a mall Santa meet-and-greet area filled with kids and parents alike.

While he often injects levity into the “Terrifier” movie, “you can fall into the trap where nobody's afraid of Art the Clown anymore,” Leone says. The character is "sadistic and cruel and evil and scary” and the filmmaker feels he needs to “be true to him, no matter how despicable the scene might be. So if I'm going to go into that really dark place, then it's a matter of me approaching it in the most perhaps delicate or responsible way possible.

“We dabble in a lot of taboo subject matter,” Leone adds. “The way it's executed could be very off-putting where you can just alienate basically the entire audience. That's a disservice to the casual horror movie fan (and) to Art the Clown as a character, because I do think he has more mass appeal than just a niche splatter fest.”

Does ‘Terrifier 3’ have a post-credits scene?

Leone reports that some screenings might run a music video for Ice Nine Kills’ new tie-in movie song “A Work of Art” after the credits roll, but there’s no extra scene of the Marvel variety. In fact he doesn’t like them, though Leone did include one in “Terrifier 2,” where following Sienna cutting off Art’s noggin in the climax, there was a post-credits sequence that showed Victoria in a mental asylum gruesomely giving birth to the villain’s head.

“I just wanted to give Sienna and Jonathan that moment to breathe and revel in victory for a moment, instead of just going right into, all right, they just killed Art the Clown and now he's immediately rebirthed back,” Leone says.

What’s the most important bit of mythology revealed in ‘Terrifier 3’?

Leone tosses in some key knowledge that connects Sienna and Art via a letter Jonathan writes to Sienna. It states that when a demon chooses a vessel who functions as a bridge between worlds – aka Art the Clown – a counterpart must be appointed by the forces of good – in this case, Sienna – to combat it and stop the demon from gaining too much power.

“That gives you every bit of information in this franchise basically that you need to know, certainly in regards to the supernatural aspect,” Leone says. That said, “I still see people saying they don't know what's going on. It just comes down to they need to know exactly who and why Art the Clown was a serial killer in the first place, and I think till I give that piece of information out, I'm going to constantly get hit with ‘This movie has no plot.’ ”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Terrifier 3' director talks gory kills, wild ending (spoilers)