If Art the Clown’s recent addition to Call of Duty had anyone concerned that their favorite indie horror icon had gone mainstream, Terrifier 3’s gruesome opening scene should immediately dispel any worries about Art selling out. Sure, Terrifier 3 may have a $2 million budget—an increase of 700% over the last installment—but no amount of money or cross-promotional marketing is going to stop writer-director-editor-producer Damien Leone from being as bloody and mean-spirited as ever. Hide your kids, hide your wife, hide your rat—no one is safe from Art the Clown this time around. Move over, Joker; the real clown prince of crime has returned to the multiplex.

We pick up with Art the Clown, once again played by David Howard Thornton, who has swapped his trademark hefty black trash bag of demented, rusty torture devices for a festive red one—this is a Christmas movie, after all. A little girl hears something go bump in the night and heads downstairs expecting to find Santa Claus, but instead, she’s greeted by a sinisterly jolly Art. After dispatching an innocent family in a sequence that confirms there is no line Art (or Leone, for that matter) won’t cross, we jump back five years to tie up some loose ends from the first film.

Once Art has his head back on straight, the film flashes forward, reintroducing audiences to Lauren LaVera’s Sienna Shaw, solidifying her as the franchise’s official final girl. Sienna has spent the last five years in and out of mental hospitals, struggling to cope with the brutal assault she suffered at the hands of Art in Terrifier 2, which left her physically and mentally scarred, and orphaned. Her uncle Greg (Bryce Johnson) picks her up from her most recent stint at a mental health institution so that she can spend the holidays with her Aunt Jess (Margaret Anne Florence) and young cousin Gabbie (Antonella Rose), who worships the ground Sienna walks on, even if she doesn’t fully comprehend the scope of her idol’s plight.

Gabbie’s inquisitive nature quickly causes strife, as her lack of respect for Sienna’s boundaries—such as reading Sienna’s diary—leads to her discovering the horrific details of what Sienna faced. There is a clear sense that, since her encounter with the “Miles County Clown,” Sienna’s version of the story isn’t fully accepted as fact. Aunt Jess and Uncle Greg clearly don’t buy the whole “I chopped an evil, possessed clown’s head off with a magical sword my dad made me” narrative. It doesn’t help that Sienna is plagued with delusional visions of her deceased friends blaming her for their deaths, and she’s popping pills like Tic Tacs to cope.

Meanwhile, Sienna’s little brother Jonathan (Elliott Fullam, also returning from Terrifier 2) seems well-adjusted after his showdown with the murderous mime. Now attending college, Jonathan is doing as well as can be expected, despite his roommate’s true-crime podcaster girlfriend pestering him for an interview. Even Jonathan has seemingly given up on his belief that Sienna was chosen by a higher power to fight the evil entity that keeps resurrecting Art the Clown. Obviously, that changes once Sienna spots Art putting in a day shift as Santa Claus at the local mall.

Art isn’t alone in this third outing of sadistic, transgressive exploits. Samantha Scaffidi also returns as Victoria Hayes, the sole survivor of the first Terrifier. From an underdeveloped victim in the first film to an institutionalized psychopath and gestational surrogate for Art’s decapitated head in the second, Vicky is now a full-blown accomplice in her tormentor’s campaign. In fact, Scaffidi’s creep factor rivals Thornton’s in several scenes. When buried under pounds of makeup and prosthetics, physicality becomes the primary avenue for expression, and Scaffidi delivers a disturbed performance that makes her not only a worthy sidekick to Art but perhaps even the one who should be running the show.

Make no mistake, though: David Howard Thornton’s performance as Art the Clown is still the secret sauce that elevates the Terrifier films beyond mere guts and gore. Thornton inhabits Art like a demonic Charlie Chaplin, crafting genuinely hilarious physical comedy bits and exuding constant personality—split as it may be. If Art would just stop hacking people to bits, you might actually think he’d be a great hang. Dare I say, Thornton almost makes Art likable, flying directly in the face of the typical silent, stoic slasher villain, which only makes him all the more terrifying when he goes in for the kill. An extended sequence in a bar where Art procures his yuletide garments is some of Thornton’s best work since taking over the role from Mike Giannelli.

While Thornton’s physicality keeps improving, Leone’s skills as a director have only marginally advanced. After attempting to deliver the first slasher epic with the two-and-a-half-hour Terrifier 2, Leone mercifully trims the runtime down to just over two hours here, which still might prove exhausting depending on your threshold for grisly violence. The editing is tighter, and the increased budget is evident on screen in all its anamorphic glory, but even more so in the film’s viscerally squishy sound design. Detractors will find ample evidence to support their “gore over substance” arguments, but the Terrifier movies have always been a skeletal vehicle for Leone to deliver the most macabre machinations his mind can manifest. Terrifier 3 is no different.

From axes to chainsaws to pipe bombs, Art has a few new toys in his bag of tricks, not to mention the chemical engineering degree he’s seemingly picked up between movies. His signature weapon of choice this time is a rigged-up bottle of liquid nitrogen that he sprays like a victim-freezing fire extinguisher. Iterating on the iconic Jason X kill, Art sprays his way through Miles County, chilling and smashing everything in his path. However, none of this is as hard to watch as Art’s take on rat torture. If there’s one thing to say about Terrifier 3, it’s that Leone is still pushing the envelope, finding new and inventive ways to eviscerate his characters with the most tactile special effects money can buy. While nothing quite stands out like the inverted bisection from the first film or the salt-in-the-wound bedroom kill from the second, the kills here exude a level of craftsmanship that only continues to improve.

Sometimes, the style is the substance. In the Terrifier films, Leone’s aptitude and admiration for makeup effects have always been the lifeblood of the series. In many ways, the Terrifier films are to makeup and special effects what the John Wick films are to stunts: a director with a background in a specific below-the-line skill, elevating that aspect while crafting narratives that celebrate the talents of that community. Narratively, Leone isn’t looking to break any molds. He happily takes his place among a long line of slasher series that turn to spiritual horror to keep their franchise cash cows alive. Leone continues to build out the lore of his characters in this third entry, and there’s a sense he’s inching toward his own heavy metal rendition of Dante’s Inferno. But more than anything, Leone just wants to exist within the storied tapestry of the slasher genre—and make you squirm in the process.