‘You’ll know it when you see it’: ‘Terrifier 3’ director teases the scene he hopes will surpass everything that’s come before

Terrifier 3 is officially on the way. But for anyone who’s seen Terrifier 2, they know that means one thing: Damien Leone has to step up his gore game. In 2016, when the original Terrifier came out, the “hacksaw scene” involving Catherine Corcoran’s character, Dawn became the staple for Leone’s unique kind of horror, which was only topped by an even gorier scene in the sequel. Of course, we’re talking about the “bedroom scene” involving Casey Hartnett’s Allie, a friend of main character Sienna who falls victim to Art the clown after he breaks into her house.

And what follows is truly horrific. It was so bad, in fact, that several people were reportedly fainting and vomiting during the scene. We’ll give as much of a toned-down description as possible, but essentially, Art mutilates Allie by scalping her, hacking off her arm and splitting the hand of the other in half between the fingers, and pouring bleach onto her — among other things. And that’s not even the half of it. Allie’s mother walks in to find Allie’s still-living body maimed beyond recognition as Art sits there gleefully.

Ever since that scene went viral, Leone has felt the pressure to go bigger in the sequel, which plans to close out the Terrifier trilogy. Talking to Variety, Leone communicates just how often the worries creep up on him, as well as teasing a scene that never made it to Terrifier or Terrifier 2 that he’s considering bringing to the threequel to somehow outdo himself. Although it sounds unlikely that he’ll go bigger or go home, Leone sounds confident enough.

“Always. There’s sleepless nights sometimes where, ‘Oh my God, I can’t let the fans of this franchise down.’ They always come to expect the next big kill scene, the next big gory set piece. How am I going to top the now-infamous hacksaw scene in Part One, and now the second movie? I get asked at the conventions, ‘How are you going to top the bedroom scene?’ I always want to swing for the fences and try and see if I could outdo myself from the the previous installment.

There was actually a kill that I was going to put in Terrifier that happened to Jenna Kanell’s character Tara. After the hacksaw scene, it was another torture scene. I knew putting those back-to-back was going to completely lose the audience because it would be way too much to handle. So that was a kill that I kept on the back burner… I didn’t even put it in Part Two. So that’s one I may explore. But there’s another one I thought of about a month ago, where it clicked and I said ‘That’s going to be the next bedroom kill scene’ — you’ll know it when you see it. I can’t say for sure I’ll ever top any of these scenes — it’s always going to be subjective — but you will know it when you see it.”

And that’s it. Leone managed to go beyond what we thought possible with the insane level of gore in Terrifier 2, but it’s looking like we’ll have another Exorcist on our hands if Leone delivers.