Terrifier 3: The Official Novelization

by Tim Waggoner

THE BIGGEST, MOST BRUTAL UNRATED FILM EVER IS NOW A BOOK!
No more clowning around. The unholy novelization of Terrifier 3 is here… and it’s the horrific splatterpunk event of the holidays.

After surviving Art the Clown's Halloween massacre, Sienna and her brother are struggling to rebuild their shattered lives. As the holiday season approaches, they try to embrace the Christmas spirit and leave the horrors of the past behind. But just when they think they're safe, Art the Clown returns, determined to turn their holiday cheer into a new nightmare. The festive season quickly unravels as Art unleashes his twisted brand of terror, proving that no holiday is safe.

Written by Tim Waggoner, the author of the Terrifier 2 Novelization, the X Trilogy (X, Pearl, and MaXXXine) Novelizations, and the Halloween Ends Novelization.
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Blood on the PAGE!
Bloody Press is the new publishing arm of Bloody Disgusting, focused on delivering distinctive genre storytelling through original works, non-fiction, and novelizations.

Genres: Horror

283 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 2, 2025

About the author

Tim Waggoner's first novel came out in 2001, and since then, he's published over sixty novels and eight collections of short stories. He writes original dark fantasy and horror, as well as media tie-ins. He's written tie-in fiction based on Supernatural, The X-Files, Alien, Doctor Who, Conan the Barbarian, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Grimm, and Transformers, among others, and he's written novelizations for films such as Ti West’s X-Trilogy, Halloween Kills, Terrifier 2 and 3, and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. He’s also the author of the award-winning guide to horror Writing in the Dark. He’s a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, a one-time winner of the Scribe Award, and he’s been a two-time finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and a one-time finalist for the Splatterpunk Award. He’s also a full-time tenured professor who teaches creative writing and composition at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio.

Reviews

[Gyalten Lekden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Where to start? Look, if you enjoyed the film, then you will enjoy this. The film has a bunch of narrative flaws, or, if we’re being generous, leaps of logic that you overlook because they set up set pieces where Art gets to do what he does best. This novelization falls victim to most of those narrative flaws as well, but it does manage to give much more lore and context across the story, even including a few scenes that aren’t in the film but help bridge our understanding of the characters and their motivations.

I think I enjoy this novelization more than I do the novelization of Terrifier 2, in large part because Waggoner goes out of his way to build up elaborate backstories for almost every character you meet, just before they are mercilessly tortured and slaughtered, making them both more tragic and often ironic as well. This helps round out the story, especially because our main character doesn’t have a whole lot to do (again, following the narrative flaws of the film). The writing is playful and it moves quickly, which is good, because if you think too much about what is happening then it kind of falls apart. I will say, though, this isn't nearly as stomach-turning as it could be, considering the source material. The violence is all there on the page, but Waggoner really focuses more on how much Art (and Vicky) are enjoying themselves than he does the graphic and disturbing nature of the kills. It is still wildly violent, don’t get me wrong, but I have read other splatter and gore-heavy works that are more visceral and manage a more personal, squeamish reaction. There is something distant to the violence here, and it feels almost cartoonish, distancing the audience from the horror of it in a way that isn’t possible when watching the film.

Look, this novel isn’t great. But it is a lot of fun, and it fills in nice little bits of lore and back story to make a little more sense of the narrative than the film offers. It does have a handful of proofing errors that suggest to me it really needed at least one more run through a proofreader (such as referring to someone as the older brother on one page and then younger brother on the next page, or spelling the main character’s name incorrectly, or saying someone is getting ready for their last day at school before winter break and then having them go off to the mall, and so on). Bloody-Disgusting is new to the book publishing business and my gut feeling is that their operation is still a little rough around the edges, or at least that is how it feels when reading this book, which is a shame. All that said, if you enjoy the film series then this is certainly worth the read. It is more well-rounded and robust than it needs to be and it is just fun to read. If you aren’t already interested in the series you probably won’t find too much here, though it is impressive how Waggoner is able to make sense, even if fractured and occasionally tenuous sense, of what is essentially a series of torture set pieces with some slapdash, after-thought lore to bind it all together. The writing style takes some sting out of the gore and violence, believe it or not, while doing a lot with the material it has to work with.

[Abigail Bryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

So so disappointed.

I loved the novelization of Terrifier 2 and was so excited when I saw this one released. Unfortunately, that excitement did not last long.

This book is absolutely riddled with errors. So much so that it distracts from the story. From mixing up or misspelling character names, to describing the same character wearing two different outfits half a page apart, seemingly completely losing track of where characters are at times, and literally countless grammar and punctuation errors, this was a hard one to get through.

I sincerely hope they run it back through and editor and proofreader.

[Zachary Weir · Rating 1 out of 5]

Im sorry, but this book blows.

As a pretty big Terrifier fan, I had somewhat high hopes when the news broke that Waggoner would be heading up the novelizations for Terrifier 2 and 3, and while I had I had a lot of issues with the adaptation of T2, it was still mostly solid. It felt rather low effort in some areas, and didnt stand out really in any regard, but it did its job. It certainly wouldn't bring in new fans, but It was a neat diversion for fans of the franchise.

But this book? Hooboy, where do we even begin? Let's start with its presentation, or rather lack thereof. Grammar? Apparently Tim Waggoner forgot about it, because it is atrocious. Now look, I read quite a bit, and I can excuse a lot. Im certainly no grammar tyrant, however this book is filled with grammatical errors, continuity errors, mislabeled characters, and perhaps the worst of all is the frequent use of flashbacks occurring withing present day scenes that give no indication that such a thing has occurred. It is pervasive to the point that I was taken out of the story continously.

One fine example of something that any editor worth their salt would have caught is found within the first handful of pages when snow is described as "white power" rather than "powder."

Just...wow.

The fact that an actual publisher allowed something this bad to be pushed out is pathetic.

Okay, well what about everything else? I'm afraid its not much better. The writing in this one is far worse than the writing in the Terrifier 2 novelization, which I thought was already dry, sterile, and lacking the visceral oomph needed to translate a slasher movie to the written form. Here, everything feels lazy and half-baked, with some truly unnatural dialouge sprinkled on top for good measure. If it weren't for the egregious grammatical errors and editing, Id assume this was written by AI, it's that bad in some spots.

And honestly, as much as I loved the movie counterpart, unlike its predecessor, Terrifier 3 doesn't have much going for the narrative. Its a movie that is entirely dependant on the creatively abhorrent kills. I felt the novelization of the second film really struggled to bring those scenes onto the page, and here its even worse. While a few kills have been added, there are a handful that are actually omitted, happening off screen rather than on page. It comes across as though the writer just couldn't be bothered to adapt them.

I've read better written fanfic then this. In fact, I've read sh*t-posts that are executed with more skill. The best thing about this book is the coverart. Overall, Terrifier 3: The Official Movie Novelization is certainly a book that exists, but I dont think it should.

Normally Id give something like this 2/5 stars but the sheer amount of errors and lack of effort drags it down to a 1.5/5 for me.

[Nico Nice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tim Waggoner is to the Terrifier franchise what Timothy Zahn is to the Star Wars universe. He just understands the characters that Damien Leone has created. Same as the Terrifier 2 novelization, this novelization expands on the events in the movie and adds some new characters and death scenes (and even describes what Leone had originally intended to be included for some scenes that were changed to the final cut of the movie). Speaking of, the death scenes are seriously ramped up to a 1000! Some of the newer scenes in particular are extremely brutal and gruesome. My biggest issue with this book and it is not the fault of the author but with the publisher, is all the damn typos! The previous book did not have this issue as it was published with a reputable company, Titan Books. This one was self published by the newly formed Bloody Press and while there is nothing wrong with that, a proofreader would have really helped and the editor doing a double take on this would also have been helpful. One page has a font size of 4 or 6 for no reason as it's not a part of the narrative. It honestly felt like this was rushed to print to get it out in time for the Christmas holiday, which is understandable given that that the holiday plays a huge part of the plot, but this could have been delayed to make sure there were no errors. Overall, this another enjoyable and blood soaked trip back to Miles County and this would have been rated a 5 if it weren't for the typos.

[Artie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I could give a higher rate but unfortunately this was pretty disappointing.
Yeah, the added scenes were pretty good (not all very clear though) but the editing errors were way too many and way too frequent. It's absurd how they didn't notice so many errors while editing the book. Names are misspelled, sometimes switched from one character to another... at one point the font randomly changed size to a very very small one for no reason.
The novelization of Terrifier 2 was way better than this.
Also, please let's stop writing "(victim) would have laughed at the irony of it if they weren't dying...". Why is this a recurring thing? They're all dying horribly, nobody would laugh while being butchered!