Texas Chainsaw 3D-review

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a gritty and horrific movie from 1974.  It didn’t have a lot of gore but it still left audiences feeling dirty and foul.  This new movie clearly wants to capitalize on the name.  The film takes off where the last ended but its mood is nothing familiar to the last film in any regard. 

After Sally escapes the Sawyer house in the first film a group of redneck vigilantes kill the Sawyers and burn down the house.  The only remaining members of the family are a baby girl that gets kidnapped and raised by one of the redneck vigilantes and Leatherface who manages to escape the fire and hides and his Grandmother’s house.  Years later the baby has grown up and has inherited her Grandmother’s house.  She brings her friends to visit the amazing new mansion. Little does she know that Leatherface is staying inside the wine cellar and he begins his killing spree anew.

Texas Chainsaw 3D does a few things right.  It has some cameos from many of the original actors of the series.  However, that is not much help to save it.  The acting is very subpar and the story is very weak.   The family tone of the movie is so out of place that it felt like Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2.  The movie seemed to borrow so much of that tone that it tried to make Leatherface an antihero. 

The gore was over the top and the effects were laughable.  The other problem is that the movie seems to have an ambiguous time period. It wants to look like it takes place in the 70s. The characters dress in 70s clothing and they drive 70s cars and don’t have cellphones but they listen to modern rap, listen to CDs, and have to pay top-dollar for gasoline.  It just doesn’t make much sense what their aim was for the time period. 

This movie is just a cash-in on a franchise name.  It’s not that well thought out.  It’s not well acted and the characters are basically so poorly made you are not supposed to care that Leatherface is turning them into paper dolls.  It’s not a good movie and it’s certainly not worth seeing if you are a fan of any of the other films.