Horror film Terrifier 3 receives incredibly rare age ban as viewers 'traumatised' by movie

A controversial new horror movie is so gory, it's been slapped with an extremely rare age rating.

Done right, the genre can produce literal nightmare fuel - sometimes unlocking new fears you never even knew you had.

But the upcoming Terrifier 3 film has scenes so shocking, it's had people vomiting and walking out of theaters in the UK.

And that's not all - viewers down under in Australia reportedly passed out during screenings.

So, it's not too surprising that France has banned all under 18s from seeing the Christmas slasher.

Director Damien Leone admitted he had to tone down his original vision for Terrifer 3(Borja B. Hojas/Getty Images)

It's the first time in 18 years France’s Classification Committee has issued the rating, since 2006's Saw 3. The age ban is equivalent to the United States’s NC-17 certification.

The movie, a sequel to 2022's Terrifier 2, sees David Howard Thornton reprise his role as Art the Clown as he embarks on a bloody Christmas Eve rampage. Very festive.

Terrifier 3 is set to release in the US, where it's actually classified R, on October 11.

Speaking out against the ban, the film's distributors, ESC Éditions, Shadowz Films and Factoris Films explained: “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."

Distributors added that they've been working 'daily and tirelessly' for more than two years 'to defend free, creative and radical genre cinema, systematically acclaimed by the press and audiences alike'.

They added: "The audience for these films, even teenagers, is a passionate cinephile, respectful of the works and the cinemas that show them."

Terrifier franchise director Damien Leone previously hinted the original third film would've been even more violent if he'd been allowed to shoot it.

In an interview with Total Film, he said of the movie series: “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.’”

Leone 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'.”