Despite its most concerted efforts, no amount of blood or gore can fill the empty void at the center of "Terrifier 3," the latest exercise in depravity in this horror franchise which seeks only to push the envelope of bad taste — or any sense of taste, for that matter — to its extreme.

Writer, director, producer and editor Damien Leone sets this chapter in his series at Christmas, so as to check one more item off his naughty list. And within minutes the "Terrifier" series mascot, Art the Clown, is chopping children to pieces with his swinging ax, just to show how far Leone is willing to go to shock the audience. What say you, dear audience member? Are you appalled yet?

Yet the only thing appalling about "Terrifier 3" — and the whole of the "Terrifier" series, which started with the 2016 original and continued with 2022's agonizing "Terrifier 2" — is how uninteresting it all is, and how little it is in service of anything beyond its surface level titillation. Rarely has so much on-screen bloodshed been so lifeless.

It's not Art the Clown's fault. Actor David Howard Thornton, who has played the demented, ax-murdering, silent clown since the beginning of the series, brings with him a playful sense of insanity to the part. Art has become a bit of a ham, and Thornton's mimed mannerisms and shocked reactions to his own bloodletting are the only redeeming aspect of the series. Without his facial expressions or feigned laughter at his own actions, the "Terrifier" movies would just be the goriest pages in Fangoria magazine with nothing in between.

What's worse is the utter stiffness and lack of humanity in the non-kill scenes. Characters, aside from the fact that they're played by actors acting in a film, are not characters, they're simply vessels for empty dialogue that stitch together the scenes in between splatter fests. And there's no sense of levity in Leone's world. It's the most subterranean, mean-spirited, depressing, ugly picture of life you're likely to find anywhere, and that's not even when Art is chopping up bodies with a chainsaw and showering in the viscera.

The story picks up after the events of the second film, which left Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) and her younger brother Jonathan (Elliot Fullam) dealing with the after-effects of their encounter with Art. Sienna decapitated Art in the last movie, but that doesn't really matter; Art's mystical lore has no comprehensible explanation — at one point he puts another decapitated head on his own headless body and carries on as if nothing happened — because getting to the next gore showcase is literally the only reason these movies exist.

And there are plenty of gore showcases on display, one involving an act of domestic terrorism at a mall Santa display. Yay, haha? It would be needlessly alarmist to signal this movie as some sort of symbol of society's decay, like this was some pearl clutching '80s congressional hearing, and the movie doesn't deserve or earn that level of notoriety. But it does seem to mark a low point in cinematic standards, a blood show with nothing on its mind other than blood and how super awesome it is. At least its late '70s and early '80s splatter-shocker forebears had a sense of ingenuity to them.

If there was a commentary — any commentary, on literally anything at all — at the core of "Terrifier 3," then it would be easier to stomach its vile nature. But its sense of provocation is its only point, and it's a dull one at that.

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'TERRIFIER 3'

Grade: F

No MPA rating (sadistic violence and endless amounts of gore)

Running time: 2:05

How to watch: Now in theaters

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