Last November, horror director Eli Roth surprised audiences with a slasher that was less sexy than expected. His film “Thanksgiving” still found a huge following — bringing in $46.5 million at the box office and securing itself a sequel for 2025. But when compared to Roth’s earlier cult favorites (think “The Green Inferno” or “Hostel II”), this R-rated effort from 2023 is decidedly lacking in one thing: nudity.
Now, a year later, Damien Leone has revolutionized genre indies by doing the opposite with his unrated… and, at times, unclothed… “Terrifier 3.” A bareback display of ultraviolence, the Christmas-themed sequel broke records in October — earning $88 million and briefly becoming the No. 1 film in the country. It also features what might be the most brutal shower sex scene ever made. So, what’s different?
“There’s no hard and fast rule to anything,” Roth said, speaking to IndieWire for the one-year anniversary of “Thanksgiving.” “You could say that audiences rejected nudity then and with ‘Terrifier 3’ that theory is out the window. But in the context of the story I was telling with these high school kids, the tone just wasn’t working.”
Test audiences took issue with two scenes in “Thanksgiving.” The first depicted a cheerleader seducing her boyfriend by jumping naked on a trampoline. (In the fake trailer from 2007 which inspired the film, the character is topless. For the feature, she mostly flashes her butt.) And the second involved Roth’s centerpiece kill — a savage slow-roasting of a woman that, before edits, culminated in chunks of her face and body melting off.
“We showed that scene to an audience. Me and [screenwriter Jeff Rendell] were there, both thinking, ‘This is going to be great. This is going to be like the bloodbath in ‘Hostel II,’” Roth said. “I just thought, ‘When that thermometer pops, people are going to cheer.’ And let me tell you, people were not cheering.”
Baffled by what went wrong, Roth said film analyst Kevin Goetz put it best: “He said, ‘You hit them over the head one too many times. It stopped being fun and it started becoming cruelty.’”
In the end, Roth went with toned-down versions of both the cheerleading and dinner table scenes — citing concerns that the other takes were not only “too misogynistic” for modern audiences but might leave movie-goers feeling “betrayed.”
“The audience was with us burning her in the oven, but only so long as we stayed just on the edge of it,” Roth said. As for the trampoline, he added, “I’m not saying nudity can’t work or you can’t have that, but with this specific movie, people liked it less.”
The filmmaker explained that he recently embraced the audience testing process not to improve his movies’ critical scores but to keep things fun for new genre fans. “This is just a different thing,” Roth said. “And I wanted to make the next ‘Scream.’”
“Thanksgiving” is still plenty brutal, but Roth’s decision to limit the movie’s more titillating aspects makes sense when you consider trends across current sexploitation. A 2023 UCLA study found that young audiences are generally less comfortable with sex in film than older generations were at their age.
“It used to be the biggest deal when you went to see a horror film. That was where there was nudity,” Roth said. “But younger audiences just have no frame of reference for that stuff. They want it on their phone. They want it on their laptops and their iPads and on OnlyFans. They don’t really want it in a public spaces around other people.”
Of course, that logic doesn’t hold true with the juggernaut “Terrifier 3.” For his big shower scene, Art the Clown (aka the titular “Terrifier”) takes a chainsaw to a college couple while they’re actively mid-coitus. The kills are lean and mean in every sense, but that hasn’t stopped Leone from getting two more “Terrifier” gigs. The series’ next sequel, “Terrifier 4,” is expected sometime in 2026.
“What’s great about the ‘Terrifier’ movies is that they’re punk rock — and the best horror gives the middle finger to everything,” said Roth. “Their whole thing is like, ‘Any rules with other movies don’t apply to us. We’re going to be the one.’ And having been on the horror convention circuit for the past year, I can tell you there’s no surprise that ‘Terrifier 3’ is doing what it’s doing. Art the Clown is the most cosplayed character. Everybody loves him.”
Roth is a big admirer of the “Terrifier” series and considers Leone’s clown a peer to his own killer pilgrim, John Carver — even if his Sony/Spyglass crowd-pleaser is an imperfect comparison. “Terrifier 3” had a budget of only $2 million against Roth’s $15 million, and anyone looking to repeat its unique business model should take a hard look at Cineverse and Iconic Events’ genius releasing strategy. Still, it’s worth asking why the infamous “Hostel” director pulled back on sex-based controversy just as Leone lurched forward.
“There’s just a sense of total insanity with ‘Terrifier,’” Roth said. “Damien is so talented and he loves the effects. He always goes for the gore and he always, always delivers. Those movies don’t give a fuck. That’s what’s so great about them. When audiences went to see ‘Hostel,’ people were judging them, like, ‘How could you go see this movie?’ It had more nudity and violence than any other film at the time, but that was 20 years ago.”
He continued, “There’s always going to be a horror film that comes along and makes people go, ‘Can you believe this? Why are audiences going to see this?’ With ‘Terrifier 3,’ they’ve occupied that space. They’ve done it and it’s been earned.”
“Terrifier 3” has sometimes been treated like an overnight success. Roth is quick to point out that’s not accurate, explaining that Leone’s microbudget “Terrifier” (2016) and its first sequel “Terrifier 2” (2022) built buzz across the horror community for several years. Nudity played a key role in the trajectory of that shoestring success. The original “Terrifier” gained traction mostly thanks to its main kill, which showed Art the Clown sawing a naked woman in half — vertically and starting at her vagina.
“When I was making the first ‘Terrifier,’ we only had $35,000 and I would say to myself, ‘Why on Earth would a horror fan come watch my $35,000 horror movie when they can watch the biggest $20 million horror movie?’” Leone told IndieWire in October. “Then I realized I could show them things that they’re not allowed to see anywhere else.”
The “Terrifier” creative said he was “leaning into exploitation” with the sequels as a means of upping the ante for his massive audience. There’s almost no doubt that will include more nudity.
“These fans love to open the door just a little wider and see if they can handle what’s behind it,” Leone said. “That’s become the talking point of ‘Terrifier’ and a staple in our franchise. It’s something we can’t possibly turn our backs on now.”
Be it through scantily clad kills or Roth’s gonzo reputation, “Terrifier 3” and the forthcoming “Thanksgiving 2” exist in an emerging genre niche that feels at once ultra-indie and mainstream. While Leone may be the most extreme name in both types of horror these days, Roth — who describes himself as an “elder statesman” of the genre — assured IndieWire he still has the super low-budget chops in him.
“I can always go back and do those mischievous $2 million and $3 million movies,” Roth said. “I have some of those in my head and I want to do them. ‘Thanksgiving’ was just a different thing. But if you do those low-budget ones well, like with ‘Terrifier,’ you can really strike gold.”