An entire franchise of sadistic horror movies is coming to a cinema near you. Terrifier 3 will be released on the 11th of October. The previous two movies, Terrifier and Terrifier 2 were originally not released to cinema but will be shown back-to-back in some Irish cinemas this October.
The entire Terrifier franchise is a celebration of extreme, brutal torture that amounts to incitement to hatred against all decent people. The Irish Film Classification Office which certified the film as suitable for release described it as having “very strong sadistic violence and graphic injury detail.”
A first screening of Terrifier 3 already had people leaving cinemas and getting sick. This may or may not have been a marketing ploy.
The problem with these three movies is not just the depiction of brutal violence on innocent people – it is the fact that the sadistic violence is celebrated as an art form. There’s a particularly sad comment on the movie’s reddit page where a woman asks for a detailed description of the violence and its grateful to receive it because “My boyfriend is so excited to go see it and I cannot stomach gore well so just want to reiterate this is SUCH a blessing for people like me who want to go to be supportive but also save some mental and emotional anguish lol”.
Lady, if your boyfriend is entertained by material that causes you mental and emotional anguish, you can do better.
But then, so can all of us.
A review of Terrifier 2 in Variety says, “when Marion Crane got slaughtered in the shower in “Psycho,” we felt for her (in a way, we were her), but “Terrifier 2” encourages us to view its victims the way the Nazis viewed theirs: as gruesome fodder for an experiment in pain.”
These films do not depict violence as necessary to a plot line that in the end condemns violence; for the Terrifier trilogy the sadism, the brutality, the torture of women is the point and not necessarily a moral evil.
According to Variety, Terrifier 2 put “sadism front and centre.” Therefore, it would be naive and dangerous to believe that this does not have an impact on the minds and souls of the viewers. Variety again, “the sequences of Art the Clown slicing, gouging, peeling, dismembering, and torturing (at one point he literally rubs salt in his victim’s wounds) are supposed to make the audience feel like they’re in the serial killer driver’s seat, a very disturbed place to be.” Normal people might find this disturbing, but the disturbed enjoy it, the very reason why the IFCO should never have approved it for release.
This trilogy of sadism, this encouragement of the barbaric, is coming to us in October and no one in the government or the Department of Justice seems to care. They care about the misogynist Andrew Tate – they believe his words are a threat to women. But of Terrifier 2, which in the words of my editor John (who had the unfortunate job of watching an infamous scene as I cannot) said of that scene that it depicted the most brutal form of violence against a woman he had ever seen. So why is the Minister for Justice Helen McEntee letting this go out to Irish cinemas? Why has the IFSO approved Terrifier 3 and 2 and 1 for release?
As per the website, the IFCO states “the remit of the Director of Film Classification was first established by the CENSORSHIP OF FILMS ACT, 1923. This short and remarkably succinct piece of legislation, although drafted during the silent movie era, remains the basis upon which IFCO operates today.
Section 7 (2) of the Act states that “the Official Censor shall certify the picture unless he is of the opinion that such picture or some part thereof is unfit for general exhibition in public by reason of its being indecent, obscene or blasphemous or because the exhibition thereof in public would tend to inculcate principles contrary to public morality or would be otherwise subversive of public morality.”
By its own admission Terrifier 3 contains very strong and sadistic violence and graphic injury detail. Terrifier 2 has “extremely strong and sadistic violence with very gory detail.” Yet both have been approved by this board.
Just who are the IFCO I asked myself and is there any movie they would not approve? The board is here.
Dr Ciarán Kissane is Director of Film Classification. In an interview with the Irish Times in December last year Dr Kissane explained a more modern approach to be taken by the IFCO. By a more modern approach what Mr Kissane means is that he is going to unilaterally rewrite Irish law and adopt a race to the bottom when it comes to Irish cinema. Just how low in the depiction of sadism should Ireland go? Why all the way, is my interpretation of the interview although not his words.
The Irish Times, “I wonder if he can now see the circumstances in which he would fail to grant a certificate to a feature, so effectively banning it.
“I suppose the legislation says it is possible,” Kissane replies. “So I can’t say it definitely never would happen. The only situation that I could currently see, in principle, would be if something was illegal.”
He means if there was evidence of illegal activity in the film’s creation?
“Yes. If there was something that was in breach of the law,” he says. “There is content out there that is illegal in other spaces. I think that would definitely be a line. Beyond that, in principle, I think the idea that adults over 18 should be free to make their own decisions is a good one. And we have had very few over-18s [certificates] since I have started. We have never had a conversation about banning anything. I can’t say never, but I find it hard to see that situation.”
That is certainly a new approach, effectively saying that no matter how degenerate the film, it would get the Irish government seal of approval. But this is not what the law says.
Mr Kissane has taken it upon himself to unilaterally change the law from granting a certificate unless something was indecent or obscene or subservice to public morality to unless the law was breached in the making of the film, it will be approved by the Department of Justice via the IFCO. Arguably, the IFCO will approve all movies unless it is a snuff movie or child pornography.
This is profoundly undemocratic. The last time I checked Ireland was a democracy and it was TDs in the Oireachtas who changed the law, not some random man from Laois.
If Minister McEntee and Taoiseach Simon Harris (who appointed Mr Kissane when he was Minister for Justice) believe that there are no rape scenes too brutal, no torture scenes too sadistic, no maiming too barbaric, no decapitation too inhumane to warrant a ban in cinemas then they can explain this to the voters and change the law accordingly. Until that happens the IFCO under the authority of the Department of Justice should apply the law.