Terrifier recap: the story so far

No. 01 · 2013 · Film

All Hallows' Eve recap

All Hallows' Eve (2013) follows a babysitter and two children who find a VHS tape in their Halloween candy holding three stories about Art the Clown. Damien Leone writes, edits and directs, building the film around his short films The 9th Circle (2008) and Terrifier (2011), with Mike Giannelli as Art the Clown. Sarah (Katie Maguire) watches with Tia and Timmy, then sends them to bed and keeps going. In the first story, Casey (Kayla Lian) is drugged by Art at a train station and wakes chained in a hellish place, where a coven of witches performs a ritual and she is taken over by Satan. In the second, Caroline (Catherine Callahan), alone in a new country house, is hunted by an alien after something crashes nearby. In the third, a costume designer (Marie Maser) meets Art at a gas station at night and he chases her down. Art's later films start here.

How All Hallows' Eve ends

All Hallows' Eve ends with the costume designer waking mutilated on Art's operating table. Sarah switches off the tape, but the phone rings with the woman's voice begging for help, and Art appears on the screen, banging on the glass from inside. She smashes the tape, hears the children scream, and finds them dead upstairs with "ART" written on the wall. Terrifier recasts Art and builds a full feature around him.

No. 02 · 2016 · Film

Terrifier recap

Terrifier (2016) follows two friends leaving a Halloween party who are stalked through an empty part of town by Art the Clown, who never speaks. Damien Leone writes and directs, and David Howard Thornton takes over as Art. A prologue shows a disfigured survivor of a massacre being interviewed on television, then attacking the host who mocks her. On Halloween night in Miles County, Tara Heyes (Jenna Kanell) and Dawn (Catherine Corcoran) stop for pizza, where Art smears the restroom and is thrown out, then kills the owner and a worker. Dawn's tyre has been slashed, so Tara calls her sister Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi) to collect them. Tara slips into a nearby building to use the toilet and meets a squatter who treats a doll as her baby. Art drugs Tara and kills Dawn with a hacksaw while she watches, then hunts Tara, an exterminator named Mike, and Victoria when she arrives. It follows All Hallows' Eve and reuses ideas from the Terrifier short.

How Terrifier ends

Terrifier ends with Art running Victoria down with a truck and starting to eat her face. When police arrive, Art shoots himself, but in the morgue he comes back to life and attacks the medical examiner. A year later Victoria, released from hospital after long treatment, turns out to be the disfigured woman from the opening, who mutilated the talk-show host. Terrifier 2 picks up in the morgue.

No. 03 · 2022 · Film

Terrifier 2 recap

Terrifier 2 (2022) brings Art the Clown back to life and sets him after Sienna Shaw, a teenager whose late father seems to have known how to stop him. Damien Leone writes and directs, with David Howard Thornton as Art and Lauren LaVera as Sienna. Art kills the coroner, takes his eye and meets the Little Pale Girl, a ghostly child dressed like him whom only some people can see. A year later Sienna is finishing a winged warrior costume her father designed before he died, while her younger brother Jonathan (Elliott Fullam) is fixated on Art, who fills pages of their father's sketchbook. Sienna dreams of Art in a television commercial for the "Clown Cafe" and wakes to find her dresser on fire beside her father's sword. Art mutilates Sienna's friend Allie and kills Allie's mother, and Sienna's own mother Barbara (Sarah Voigt) is shot after Jonathan runs away. Art kidnaps Jonathan on Halloween night and lures Sienna to a carnival haunted house called Terrifier. It follows Terrifier.

How Terrifier 2 ends

Terrifier 2 ends at the carnival, where Art kills Sienna's friends Brooke and Jeff and stabs Sienna with her own sword. She dies, returns, and cuts off Art's head while he is biting Jonathan, and the Little Pale Girl walks off with it. In a psychiatric ward, a scarred Victoria Heyes scrawls on the wall in blood. Terrifier 3 picks up the threads.

Post-credits scenes

Yes. A post-credits scene shows Victoria giving birth to Art's living head in the hospital.

No. 04 · 2024 · Film

Terrifier 3 recap

Terrifier 3 (2024) brings Art the Clown back at Christmas, five years after his beheading, with a possessed Victoria Heyes at his side. Damien Leone writes and directs, with David Howard Thornton as Art, Lauren LaVera as Sienna and Samantha Scaffidi as Victoria. On the night of Terrifier 2, Art's body rises, rejoins its head, and he and Victoria, now taken over by the Little Pale Girl, kill their way out of the asylum and sleep in an abandoned house. Five years later Sienna Shaw leaves a mental health centre to stay with her aunt Jess (Margaret Anne Florence), uncle Greg (Bryce Johnson) and cousin Gabbie (Antonella Rose). She suffers survivor's guilt and sees the dead, while her brother Jonathan (Elliott Fullam) is away at college. Woken by demolition workers, Art takes a Santa suit, slaughters a family and bombs a shopping mall. It follows Terrifier 2.

How Terrifier 3 ends

Terrifier 3 ends in the family home, where Art and Victoria kill Greg and Jess and try to possess Sienna. Gabbie gets Sienna to open a present that hides her father's sword; Sienna cuts Art's throat and beheads Victoria, whose body melts into a portal to Hell. Gabbie falls in with the sword, and Sienna vows to bring her back while Art escapes onto a city bus. Terrifier 4 is in development.