Strangely enough, I've never seen a 'Texas
Chainsaw Massacre' movie. I don't know why this is, I
mean I've seen all the Jason's and Freddy's and Michael's but
the time of Leather Face passed me by. But I'm fixing
all of that right now in the year of our Lord of 2013!
I'm paying good money to see 'Texas Chainsaw'… no 'Massacre'
in 3D! and… I'm an idiot.
To help out the uninformed, such as myself, 'Texas Chainsaw'
begins where Tobe Hooper's 1974 epic left off with the final
girl getting the hell out of that mess. Now our movie
begins, in the same time frame, with a standoff between the
Sawyers and the good people of Hellhole Texas with the good
citizens of Hellhole burning the place down, killing
everybody. Almost. A baby girl survives, which a
couple of redneckians snatch up and claim as their own, and
obviously Leather Face survives because if he didn't there
would be no movie.
Fast forward to what should be about forty years I imagine, if
we are using the original's time line, where we meet crazy hot
Piggly Wiggly butcher's assistant Heather Miller (Alexandra
Daddairo), who we know is the stolen Sawyer girl, which makes
Heather the world's tightest forty year old woman. Halle
Berry and Jennifer Anniston have to jump back and whisper
'damn' when they see Heather. Heather just got a notice
that her grandma Sawyer has just passed, and left Heather her
big house in Hellhole. After Heather gets over the shock
that she has a granny and the relief that she has no genetic
ties to those psychos posing as her parents, she rounds up her
people for a trip to Texas. Her people being her
boyfriend Ryan (Trey Songz) who clearly digs older chicks, her
massively slutty BFF Nikki
(Tania Raymonde), and some guy Ryan hooked
the slut with, Kenny (Keram Malicki-Sanchez). Looking at
Nikki one would think the woman wouldn't need a 'hook-up'
considering she's almost too hot to touch and
she's a slut, but I guess it's a tough market out there.
They also picked up a bonus guy to die along the way in Darryl
the Hitchhiker (Shaun Sipos).
So our attractive young people get to Hellhole, Heather gets
the keys from the lawyer who STRONGLY encourages her to read
the letter granny gave her, and enter the house. To the
surprise of no one, Hitchhiker dude is up to no good, opens a
locked vault while trying to steal stuff and sets Leather Face
free. No more Hitchhiker Dude. Random hookup dude
also finds the hidden room which looks plenty ominous to me,
but he checks it out. You know what happens
next. The slut and the boyfriend apparently used have a
little something, and what better time to rekindle that
something while his girlfriend and her best friend is upstairs
not doing anything in particular and will no doubt, be looking
for them. Out of all the time these two have known each
other and could've have sex anywhere, they choose this
time. Meanwhile, Leather Face has introduced himself to
his long lost cousin, not aware she's blood, thus only
desiring to chainsaw her to death.
Some other stuff happens, but what Leather Face really wants
is revenge against those who burnt up his kin so many years
ago. And eventually his cuz will want the same
revenge. And now, I guess, Leather Face is a hero of
some kind? I guess? And now 'Texas Chainsaw' is
officially retarded.
As a 'review' of 'Texas Chainsaw' goes, it's pretty standard
as far as modern horror movies seem to be these days.
Zero fear, zero suspense, lots of action, lots of gore.
This is how they go. Director John Lussenhop's 'Texas
Chainsaw' deviates from this in no way, no shape, or no
form. It's competently shot, the 3D isn't horrible, and
it's acted out by the cast about as well as it can be.
And like almost every other horror movie, past, present and
future, the characters in it are stupid. Even though I
think the ones here might be a little dumber than most.
SPOILERS WILL FOLLOW.
Let us bypass all of the regular character stupidity such as
young people whose legs stop working, or those who like to
have sex at inopportune times, or a dude hitchhiking all the
way to Texas so he can steal silverware, or a cop all by
himself entering a known house of horrors confidant that his
'Desert Eagle' will handle everything. Or when
Heather asks the lawyer 'How did you find me?' and the lawyer
saying 'you were never lost'. That's fine right there,
but personally I'd have some follow up questions to that, such
as 'what the hell do you mean?' but not my girl Heather.
Forget all that stuff and let's go straight to the end where
Leather Face becomes some kind of folk hero with Heather and
Leather Face uniting as one. For starters, Leatherface
already killed her man and her best friend. Forget that
they were bonking each other, Heather never knew this.
Thus I'm thinking Heather should still have some issue with
this. Then there's the town sheriff (Thom Barry).
Now admittedly the evil locals did do Leatherface wrong, but
he did slaughter a bunch of people so he probably deserved
some of this wrong doing. So when Leatherface chainsaws
the most evil local town dude, who also happens to be the
Mayor, meaning he will be missed, whose son is a deputy,
meaning he will be looking for him and knows full well who did
this to his dad… but forgetting all of that, after Leatherface
kills these people, the sheriff just… let him go. I mean
in this movie alone this dude has already murdered a half
dozen people, not to mention the previous movie murders so… I
don't know if that's really good and logical police procedure
right there. That's kind of dumb I think, but what the
hell do I know.
Regardless, zero fear, zero suspense, completely pointless,
slightly mindlessly entertaining. This… is 'Texas
Chainsaw'.
