Controversial horror debuts with near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score despite causing vomiting

Art the Clown has been thrilling audiences

The gory new horror movie Terrifier 3 comes with a warning after prompting walk-outs and vomiting, but audiences don’t seem to mind – the film has debuted with an impressive Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 94 percent.

Critics have also warmed to the antics of serial killer Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton), with the film receiving a score of 76 percent from critics.

The Terrifier films, from director Damien Leone, have earned a reputation with viewers for their extreme levels of violence and gore.

The previous film in the series reportedly made people “pass out” in theatres, which Leone denied was a “marketing ploy” created to promote the independent movie.

The new sequel 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 caused 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.

David Howard Thornton as Art the Clown in ‘Terrifier 3’ (Bloody Digusting)

Now, anyone under the age of 18 in France is banned from seeing Terrifier 3, which has not 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.”

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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 modest budget of $250,000 (£191,000).

The popularity of the films has seen Leone claim that an unnamed major studio approached him about rebooting Terrifier for a more mainstream horror audience.

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.”

Terrifier 3 opens in the US and UK today, October 11.