Movie Review: Texas Chainsaw 3-D (2013)

Oh wait. Wrong bad movie.

It isn't often that I see a movie that makes me feel totally outraged. I feel like getting worked up like that unless it's for comedy is a waste of emotional effort. But Texas Chainsaw 3-D is a movie deserving of every bit of angry focus that I can deliver. This is a testament to why a remake shouldn't be possible without consent of a still living creator. Let's just dive into this Texas sized shit pile and get it over with.

The first thing I notice of course is that Texas Chainsaw has four stars on Netflix. I question who the hell is watching this movie and leaving anything more than a burning bag of feces on the director's door step. The other noticable thing is that Texas Chainsaw is written by the same dynamo that brought us Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday, the lowest point in a series that is noted as never really having a high point (but I still love them, yes yes yes I do). Also as a contrast it was made by Lionsgate Studios who made the much better movie I last reviewed, See No Evil, please go watch that instead. The opening credits is a series of highlights from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) as a recap. They commit the sin of reminding the audience of much better movies than the one we're actually watching. There is also absolutely no concept of continuity it shares with the movie it's supposed to be a follow up to. The window of the Sawyer home should be broken from where the only survivor jumped through it and escaped. Now here is where it gets stupid, after the events of the original, the police show up to the Sawyer home to take Leatherface in. Now, this should not be happening because the opening narration of Texas Chainsaw Massacre implies that no murderers were ever found and in another swoop they erase Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 from existence, which is just unforgivable. But, anyway. The whole Sawyer clan decides they aren't giving up family and end up all shot down in a gunfight with the mob that shows up outside their house. One of the Sawyer women crawls from the burning house with her baby, she is killed and her baby stolen by one of the mob for he and his wife to raise.

That's right. You traded insane Dennis Hopper for this crap.

So, if I wasn't saying what the fuck already it's about to get even worse. This movie willfully ignores the rules of time. 39 years pass. 1974-2013 go by before we see our main character again, the infant child taken in 1974. She is in her mid-20s... What the fuck? She should be 40! I'm not sure if I should be insulted, because the writer was either so lazy he didn't care or thought the audience was too stupid to notice. Which is where I will talk about our cast of victims. They are god awful. Only one of them is a half way decent person and he's killed in the most brutal way. The rest are cardboard cut outs of shitty 20-somethings with no real character traits other than being young and attractive, her best friend and boyfriend are also the most piece of shit characters to be on a screen. The women of this movie exist purely to  wear short shorts and show skin and thus the movie is zero amounts of interesting as you wait for some to please get fucked by a power tool. Also the hitchhiker they pick is another handsome young person who, like all hitchhikers do, turns out to be a total shit bag and attempt to steal from the idiots who leave him alone in the nice house with items worthy of stealing. The rest are redneck and country stereotypes that aren't worth noticing. Which brings me around to a point I forgot, this movie has a plot. Our main girl discovers she is adoped when a relative passes and leaves her this sweet estate to live in. So she and her friends go there after ignoring a letter that came with the notice. Just remember that.

Looking good for 40. Am I right?

So they end up at the house. They leave to get supplies and hitchhiker is stealing everything he can fit in a backpack. He then stumbled upon the most poorly concealed secret door in history and goes into a basement where he finds... Leatherface. Who should be almost 70 at this point but looks just as giant, spry and strong as he ever did. Fuck this movie. Well, this guy gets beat to death with a hammer. But that's not before he discovers a dead that is somehow in the fucking house that should have been looked over by the police when the residents died! So the kids come home and shit goes down hill real fast as random teen #4 goes into the basement and get jacked up by Leatherface. Then the main girl gets captured and random teen #4 gets chainsawed in half on a meat hook. She gets away because, reasons.  She then meets up with her friend and boyfriend who have just been banging in the stables and they attempt an escape in the van that shows the stupidity of these people. Leatherface slices the tire and the boyfriend is killed in the crash and the best friend is taken by Leatherface while the main girl books it. Leatherface gives chase and leads to what should have been an amazingly bloody and violent scene at the state fair. But instead Leatherface runs through a crowded fair with a chainsaw, killing no one and the crowd appears to not even notice the giant, flesh wearing man swinging a fully revved chainsaw. This movie was bad before, but really, fuck this movie.
So then you go on the stupid spiral of discoveries that she's related to Leatherface and the cops try to use her as bait to lure him out to kill him. They are beating Leatherface to death in a meat packing plant and the main girl feels sympathy for her relative and helps him to beat the mean old cops and mayor who want him dead.  That's right folks, this movie is trying to make you feel sympathy for the murdering, cannibal, rapist who wears people's faces as clothing. Leatherface is supposed to be the anti-hero. Texas Chainsaw 3-D is just trash on so many levels. The worst part of it all, the main character finally reads the note she's had all movie about three quarters of the way through which explicitly tells her that her cousin (which is actually her uncle but this movie is stupid) is living in the basement and will protect her if she takes care of him. So all the terror and murder could have been avoided by reading. If that's not enough to just make turn off the movie in disgust, I don't know what is.

So with all that said, the special effects. They aren't very memorable at all and none of the kills are particularly interesting. They are mostly rehashes of the kills from the original movie. In fact it strives kind of hard to be just like it in as many ways they can get away with. Even recreating shots from the original. There's really not much to say.

Run, Leatherface! Run to a better movie!

There isn't a reason I can see for why this movie made a dime over it's budget. Leatherface could have written a better script with his chainsaw on someone's body.  The original story was so much more intersting and would have been filmed with a Kill Bill or Pulp Fiction style structure. It was scrapped in favor of this script because it was "Too risky" to go with. If I didn't know any better, I'd say Texas Chainsaw 3-D was made by someone who had never seen the 1974 version. No one did this for love, art or respect for the work of Tobe Hooper. It was just a cheap attempt to feast on the corpse of the series just like the Sawyer family it depicts. I can't suggest this garbage to anyone, even for a good laugh. It's just not worth anyone's time.

Me at the end of Texas Chainsaw 3-D

This week to celebrate the DVD release of Oculus, I'll be posting a review of it, to maybe convince you to give it a shot if you missed it in the theater. Also a few articles about the fall season are incoming sense it's a time of year I just adore. So, be watching for it and don't be afraid to be a little scary.