Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)

Chainsaw: Bbrr brr brrrrrrrr!!!

By John Luessenhop
With Alexandra Daddario, Thom Barry and Scott Eastwood

As a huge fan of horror, I like to see the new movies from the big horror franchise. Even though it is invariably disappointing to compare new films to their original counterparts, it's usually an entertaining, gory experience.

Texas Chainsaw starts with images and short scenes from the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). One girl escaped and the police is about to arrest Leatherface. The police man is trying to convince them to hand him out when a crowd from town arrives and starts shooting at the farm, in wrathful revenge. After the farm is burnt to the ground, one man from the crowd finds a woman with her baby, and he kills the woman and takes the baby. Fast forward to the present, the child is a grown up and has no idea she is adopted until she inherits a house from her grandmother. She decides to go see it, along with a few friends.

The first criticism I'd have for this movie is that it is chock full of clichés.

First of all, don't they know that the worse thing you can do to a psychopathic, deranged serial killer is burn their family down and give them an excuse to come back with more reason to hunt you down?! They must have missed the horror memo. Another cliché, which is mostly true for the first half of the movie, is that the film features a group of young adults, all surprisingly attractive, wearing shirts too tight to be buttoned up, ready to get drink alcohol and smoke, who will end up in trouble without even realizing it.

The gruesome scenes are entertaining, although the pitiful attempt at making this film in 3D renders very poorly when watched in a normal 2D way. The chainsaw, meathooks and other blunt force trauma are all pretty gratuitous and bloody which is, after all, the main reason to watch such film.

The twists are uninspiring and the attempts to make us feel bad for Leatherface and blame it on the townsfolk is very 21st century, has been seen and reseen and doesn't really work out anyway. But I guess it was a necessary evil in order to have the young girl linked to the story. Most of the scary moments come from loud noises, or sounds (read : "bbrrr brrrrr brrr") but it works fairly decently overall.

The introduction scene has the merit of featuring a lot of actors from the previous films of the franchise. The film is entertaining, not because of the story or the acting, but because the action never really stops, even though there is a real change of pace between the two half of the movies.

I liked: The intro. The blood and chainsaw. The Sheriff Hooper. The dead skin mask scenes.

I disliked: Full of young adults horror movies clichés. The necessity to film from a thigh-height camera every time there's a young lady seen from behind. The reversal of the situation half-way through the movie.

47/100
Not original, not smart, not memorable... But entertaining for the amateurs of new horror.