‘The Barn: Part III’ Makes Gore Look so Good [Panic Fest Review]
Full transparency – I’ve not seen Justin M. Seaman’s The Barn. I haven’t seen his 2022 sequel, The Barn: Part II, either. So, I went into—are you ready for this—The Barn: Part III completely blind. The third, and reportedly the final, film in the series seems to be a capstone for all the barnyard violence featured in the previous two films. Did the heaps of lore make a lick of sense to me? No, not really. But The Barn: Part III is exactly the kind of VHS-era slasher I unabashedly love, so the blind carnage was enough to win me over.
If you’ve been in Seaman’s Barn before, you’ll no doubt understand what’s going on pretty quickly. A cold open features two returning players from the previous entry, and then the sequel (unlike its predecessors) flashes forward to the present day.
Josh and Heather Harper (Courtney Gains and Kelli Maroney) are now grown, and it’s been 27 years since an evil, Halloween trio– The Boogeyman, Hollow Jack, and the Candy Corn Scarecrow—have risen from the… corn, I think, to wreak holiday mayhem. The siblings are making a concerted effort to prevent a similar tragedy, and thus far, they’ve been doing a solid enough job. But kids will be kids (and, principally, boys will be boys), and the town is again besieged by supernatural beings with a penchant for practical effects.
Megan (Amanda Byrne) and Kyle (Tristan Olsen) are tired of being bullied at school. Naturally (not really), they steal Kyle’s uncle’s Halloween bible and summon the aforementioned monsties to scare their bullies. No, really. They think the trio are of the Sheriff Brackett variety, eager to pop in for a jolt before disappearing. They’re not. They’re monsters.
Cody Ruch and Samantha Sanford are credited with the special effects and creature design, and if anything is worth the price of admission, it’s their work. The Barn: Part III is packed to the brim with violence. In fact, it’s almost akin to a showcase reel for the sundry ways the team can concoct to tear bodies apart. It’s gnarly, and almost entirely practical, and just when you think you’ve seen the most of what they’re willing to do, another head splits open, or a pair of eyes pop out of a skull like a children’s toy.
Yeah, the bullies get it good, but so too does the entire town as the monsters besiege a Fall Festival, hacking and slashing their way through anyone unfortunate enough to be in their path. The connective tissue—including what I imagine to be a holdover thread of cults and Death itself—is slight. The Barn: Part III doesn’t have a hay day with its story. It’s incidental, means to an end. And that end includes baby pumpkins—perhaps the cutest horror villain of the year—gobbling up guts.
Fans of the franchise will likely find more to resonate with it. The finale is suitably big, almost Army of Darkness in scale, and it will assuredly provide closure for fans who have been on the ride the entire time. While I haven’t been, Seaman and company have lit a fire under me. I’m eager to see where this whole thing started. If the gore quotient is anywhere near this trilogy-capper’s, I’ll bet I’d be satisfied. The Barn: Part III is a tricky little slasher, and it’s undoubtedly an exceptional indie treat.
The Barn: Part III premiered at this year’s Panic Fest Film Festival
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The Barn: Part III
Summary
The Barn: Part III is all carnage, little story. With gore this exceptional, Justin M. Seaman’s trilogy-capper succeeds nonetheless.
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