Review by Kayley Viteo
I still remember the first time I saw The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – I’m sure any horror fan worth their salt can. It has stood the test of time (now nearly 40 years later) to become one of the most frightening and disturbing films in the horror canon. I say this to illustrate how truly low the franchise has now sunk. Texas Chainsaw 3D is a trashy, awful mess of a film that is disappointing and aggravating in every single way. This review contains spoilers, so please read at your own risk.
Texas Chainsaw 3D is baffling in nearly everything it does or tries to do, but the plot and script are the worst offenders. It is a direct sequel to the original, ignoring everything else in the franchise, and begins immediately as its predecessor ends. (Let’s just take a moment and acknowledge the deep pain we must all feel at having to link these two films together in any way.) Just after Sally (Marilyn Burns) has gotten away from Leatherface, a single police officer is overrun by a crowd of rednecks hell bent on just killing everyone. This clusterfuck leaves all the Sawyers dead and one baby stolen. That baby is, of course, our lead character Heather (Alexandra Daddario), who is ultimately given a mansion from her serial killer-raising grandmother who apparently grew money on trees.
Heather and her “friends” travel to her new mansion, a group including her boyfriend Ryan (Tremaine Neverson, aka Trey Songz, who I can now confirm has no talent in music or film), her best friend Nikki (Tania Raymonde), Kenny (Keram Malicki-Sanchez) and hitchhiker Darryl (Shaun Sipos) because, of course, it’s not a road trip if you don’t pick up the stranger you just hit with your old-school van. It becomes apparent very quickly that everyone is an asshole except for Heather, and Texas Chainsaw 3D dooms itself by giving the audience zero characters to identify with. It suffers from a baffling array of crazy sub-plots, including a cheating boyfriend and best friend, a hitchhiker with the opposite of a heart of gold, and a Mayor that apparently has more power over the law than the local Sheriff. And then there’s Kenny, whose only character trait is that he is apparently a good cook – at least until he gets hacked into pieces and becomes the dinner. Is my disdain for this movie coming through yet?
One thing I can say about Texas Chainsaw 3D is that it doesn’t make you wait for anything – it moves quickly, which is probably the only reason why I didn’t walk out of the theater. That isn’t to say that it doesn’t have boring moments, the pinnacle of which is a truly unnecessary scene of a cop moving through the mansion’s sub-levels with a gun and an iPhone. Its use of 3D, a medium I have no affection for, is remarkably limited, so if the use of 3D is a plus for you normally it won’t be here. Other than a few jump-scares (almost all of which have nothing to do with the 3D), Texas Chainsaw 3D hardly deserves its horror label except for the level of gore.
But, in the end, what we’ll truly remember from this movie is the way in which it ends, and the way in which it struggles to reinvent Leatherface and the Sawyer clan as a sympathetic, struggling family. Trouble is, it just doesn’t work – and I don’t know anyone who would really want it to. Heather, who apparently can’t button a shirt properly, reveals to Leatherface through a burn mark right above her breast (again, of course), that she is family. Leatherface releases her, and disturbing family bonding ensues, despite the fact that he has killed her friends and her lover. This sequence gives rise to one of the dumbest lines in horror history, which I won’t spoil for you here because that would ruin the laughter – one of the few pleasures this movie inspires, albeit unintentionally. Finally, the film ends with Heather embracing her past and now future as Edith Sawyer, caretaker of Leatherface.
Texas Chainsaw 3D is the lowest of the low, a shitty movie that should be forgotten immediately. Unfortunately, it probably won’t be, and because of success at the box office we may well see a sequel. If you’re a fan of this franchise (or a fan of good movies), I would highly suggest ignoring this tragedy of a movie completely.
Texas Chainsaw 3D is currently open just about everywhere getting way more exposure and making infinitely more money in a fortnight than a thousand considerably more deserving movies will in the entirety of 2013.