New horror film receives rare ban after shocking audiences

‘We can only deplore this unexpected final decision,‘ said the film’s distributors

The controversial new horror film Terrifier 3 has received a rare rating in France after the film shocked audiences in the UK for its excessive violence and gore.

The film, which opens in the UK on 11 October, follows the exploits of serial killer ‘Art the Clown’ as he goes on a bloody rampage on Christmas Eve.

The slasher has already reportedly caused incidents during preview screenings with Signature Entertainment, the film’s UK distributor saying that their gala screening prompted 11 walkouts, nine during the opening scene and one person to vomit.

Bloody Disgusting is now reporting that France’s Classification Committee has moved to enforce a rare ban on the film, according to the film’s French distributors ESC Éditions, Shadowz Films and Factoris Films.

Now anyone under the age of 18 in France is banned from seeing Terrifier 3, which has happened in the country since Saw III hit French cinemas in 2007. The rating is the equivalent of the United States’s NC-17 certification.

In a statement, the distributors said: “We can only deplore this unexpected final decision, which will seriously hamper the release of the film, awaited by tens of thousands of French viewers and scheduled for 9 October (and of course maintained). Terrifier 3 is a film d’auteur in the purest tradition of the slasher genre, with perfectly ‘grand-guignolesque’ and unrealistic violence. The film never takes itself too seriously, and we know that viewers will have the necessary distance and maturity to understand and appreciate this artistic approach.

“In addition, for over 2 years now, we’ve been working daily and tirelessly to defend free, creative and radical genre cinema, systematically acclaimed by the press and audiences alike. The audience for these films, even teenagers, is a passionate cinephile, respectful of the works and the cinemas that show them.

“The history of genre cinema, its excesses and outrages, is intimately linked to the history of cinema itself. Restricting access to audiences will always be a serious decision with a disturbing message, isolating authors and distancing them from their public.”

David Howard Thornton as Art the Clown in Terrifier 3 (Signature Entertainment/Jesse Korman. All Rights Reserved)

The Terrifier series has been one of the biggest independent horror hits of recent years with its 2022 sequel earning more than $15m (£11m) at the worldwide box office, from its very modest budget of $250,000 (£191,000).

The popularity of the films has seen Leone claim that an unnamed major studio approached him intending to reboot Terrifier for a more mainstream horror audience but on one demand.

Talking to Total Film, he said: “They wanted to reboot it for a wider audience. That’s not what I was interested in. They would say, ‘It’s gotta be rated R, it can’t be as gory as you made it.’”

The 42-year-old director added: “I knew they’d never let me shoot the first 10 minutes of what I wanted to do [in Terrifier 3]. So I thought, ‘Let’s just stay true to what this franchise is.”