Art the Clown returns to wreak yuletide havoc in this festive threequel they should have called Christmas Mime: Missing Toes and Crime.

Five years after surviving the Art attack of Terrifier 2, Sienna (Lauren LaVera) is released from hospital to stay with her aunt and uncle. Before you can say “Santa’s grotty”, Art (David Howard Thornton) has violently obtained a Father Christmas costume and starts meandering his way towards Sienna (confusingly pronounced the same as Santa in American), who spends the whole film bonding with her annoying cousin Gabbie (Antonella Rose) – or Cousin It as she should be known.

Writer/director Damien Leone seems fundamentally confused about whether we are meant to invest in the story side of Terrifier 3. The amount of time devoted to the supernatural soap opera suggests we are, but these Art-less (and plotless) scenes resemble the excerpts of the parody Stab movies from the Scream franchise. Ironic or not, we still have to watch this for two hours, leaving us waiting the full 12 days of Crassmas to see a few scenes of Art’s increasingly irritating antics.

For a movie people are only watching for the gore, there sure is a lot of Christian imagery and supernatural mumbo jumbo the clown. Art is also accompanied by Victoria from the first film (Samantha Scaffidi) who acts as his mouthpiece, because that’s exactly what the terrifying mute clown needed: monologues. The result will scare only the most serious coulrophobes; anyone else seeking offensive festive torture porn would be better off watching The Passion of the Christ.

Terrifier 3 becomes formulaic to the point of clown-conventional, alternating ad Clauseam between the soppy and the sloppy. A far cry from the jolting brutality of the 85-minute original, it makes Terrifier another slasher franchise with one interesting instalment and Christ knows how many bad sequels.