Conventional wisdom may dictate that you need a guy dressed up as a bat to properly defeat the Joker. But this past weekend, the indie distributor Cineverse fought fire with fire – or fought one deadly clown with another, as Terrifier 3 knocked the ill-regarded Joker sequel out of the top spot at the box office. (For that matter, ex-Batman Michael Keaton did also outshine Joker: Folie à Deux, with the sixth weekend of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.) For those who only have room in their head to keep track of one psychotic clown at a time, Terrifier is a homegrown slasher-movie franchise that began in earnest with a barely released practical-effects calling card: the first Terrifier feature, which played in a handful of theaters in 2018. (A shorter version appeared in the earlier anthology film All Hallows’ Eve.) A vastly more elaborate but still low-budget sequel followed in 2022; now a third film, still only a $2m production, has outgrossed its predecessor in a single weekend, handily taking the number one spot. It’s on track to become one of the biggest horror movies of the year.

The new entry continues the, ah, adventures of Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton), a silent killer outfitted in black-and-white face paint and an accompanying clown costume, pantomiming his way through a variety of intensely grisly, sometimes stomach-churning murders. Though the movies aren’t terrifically clear about this, Art is a serial killer during most of the first film, then resurrected by a demonic entity that makes him near impossible to kill in the sequels. Not that anyone has much of a chance to try: the typical Art the Clown encounter involves him pestering, vexing or otherwise confounding people who think he’s just a weirdo in a costume before he whips a weapon out of his garbage bag and commences murders that can be, quite literally, torturously drawn out (several of the “kills” are paced out like action or dance sequences) or, on occasion, extremely concise (sometimes he just shoots people).

Either way, the Terrifier movies are not exactly taut with suspense. Rather, they traffic in spectacle, derived from their sometimes-comic willingness to tear flesh asunder – and show, not just imply, all of the gruesome damage Art inflicts, sometimes nudging audiences into disbelieving laughter. The sequels in particular are consciously designed as 80s throwbacks, increasingly parlaying their low budgets into something resembling retro ambience, even though they’re set in modern times. This isn’t the type of horror movie that has typically crossed over into mainstream success. Terrifier 3 may be the first unrated movie – it easily would have gotten an NC-17 from the MPAA – to top the North American box office, and it may be the goriest movie to ever enter wide release.

The last series to fill so many buckets of blood on such a consistent basis was the so-called “torture porn” of Saw, recently revived with a hit 10th movie. (An 11th is on the way.) Beyond the veneer of elaborate torture, the Terrifier movies don’t have much in common with the Saw pictures, which involve nesting storylines, crazy twists and a soap opera’s worth of interconnected characters and backstories, as the movies bend time to figure out how to incorporate their best-known character, the “Jigsaw killer” played by Tobin Bell. (Technically, he died way back in Saw III, and no supernatural elements have been introduced to revive him; only elaborate flashbacks.) Writer-director Damien Leone has worked some lore into the Terrifier movies, but it’s more vague than complicated; the second and third movie have a designated Final Girl, Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera), whose dead father bequeathed to her a sword capable of inflicting harm upon the malevolent clown.

LaVera brings a lot of conviction to Sienna, and she’s certainly a heroine easy to root for, no matter how much “fun” Art’s depraved antics are supposed to be. (At my showing, the audience applauded the conclusion of several kills; they also cheered when Sienna finally struck back.) But the 80s-fantasy angle of Terrifier 2 isn’t necessarily a series staple; while the third entry brings back Sienna and her sword, it’s more concerned with comporting itself as a Christmas-themed slasher movie. Yes, a bunch of children get killed when Art masquerades as Santa Claus. That we only see the dismembered body parts, and not the actual dismembering, is actually Leone exercising restraint.

So is it just more of that bad-taste envelope-pushing that has catapulted this series from depths-of-Tubi cult attraction to mainstream hit? That must be part of it: the allure of seeing something that has maneuvered around studio-movie gatekeepers. This weekend’s horror sequel Smile 2 has some truly gnarly gore of its own; for that matter, the recently canceled Chucky TV series has moments that would put plenty of R-rated movies to shame. Yet these properties feel, on some level, preapproved; the Terrifier series offers the opportunity to watch a slasher icon develop before our eyes. Most of the aforementioned titans of the genre have been around for literal decades. (Saw, the last truly galvanizing new slasher-like movie, just turned 20!) This means that many horror fans will have come to them reputation first, familiar from iconography, streaming services, cable marathons, merchandising … almost anything but fresh frights coming out in theaters everywhere, especially considering that Freddy and Jason haven’t appeared in new movies for over a decade. Art is certainly the first genuine horror icon of the 2020s – the Covid era.

The pandemic also seems to have shifted the ground of moviegoing. Some audiences seem to have more or less retired from it, happy to wait a few weeks to watch new releases at home, often leaving only the biggest franchises standing at the top of the arts. (The top 10 movies at the North American box office so far in 2024 are all some kind of sequel.) Terrifier 3 is a sequel too, of course, with two more in the works, and streaming is always there in case the next one flops. But dry spots in the release schedule – from Covid, strikes and corporate caution – have opened up some opportunities outside the five remaining major studios. The triumph of Terrifier 3 feels like it was seeded last December, when the pre-Christmas weekends were seeing upwards of half a dozen movies from outside the major studios placing in the box office top 10 – numbers unseen for as long as studios have been this consolidated, maybe longer. Among the titles: The Boy and the Heron, Godzilla Minus One, the Beyoncé concert film, a filmed Broadway production and some more traditional movies from the mini-major Lionsgate.

Many of these were events for certain specific demographics; isn’t it time that horror sickos got similar attention as a niche audience that can rally into a seeming majority? There’s been an explosion of streaming horror movies thanks to services like Shudder and Screambox (the latter was the post-theatrical home of Terrifier 2), and a wide release for Terrifier 3 invites a certain type of geek out of their home and into the weird, sometimes discomfiting world of watching Art’s transgressions with a crowd. He’s a pop star and Godzilla, rolled into one hideous package, and while any of those things can be experienced at home, that’s not the ideal venue. The clown guise might seem mocking, of both supposedly harmless children’s entertainment and a boilerplate fear that’s been overexploited. But to some degree, Art’s sicko-mode clowning is sincere: old-fashioned, unsophisticated and designed to draw a crowd.