Texas Chainsaw 3D

Texas Chainsaw 3D: a film that has to resort to throwing chainsaws at its audience to make sure they’re pay attention. It ignores all other sequels and prequels of the Chainsaw franchise and carries on from the events of the 1974 original, beginning with the townspeople burning down Leatherface’s house along with his entire family. Years later, teenager Heather Miller inherits a Texas estate from her grandmother and travels there with a group of friends, only to discover that the house harbours a chainsaw-wielding serial killer with a mask of skin sewn to his face. Leatherface is back… again.

 One of Texas Chainsaw’s biggest failings is its insistence that it is a sequel to the original. If they had marketed it a sequel to the 2003 remake, that would have been bearable, but to actually try to snuggle up to the warmth of the original in the hope that some of its greatness would rub off just doesn’t really work.  The film even begins with a muddled two minutes of actual clips from Tobe Hooper’s classic – an attempt to remind its audience of what happened, treating it almost as though it were a condensed prequel, but it essentially just acts as a comparison. Big mistake. It’s like if a small child showed its parents an oil painting by Picasso and then held up a scribbled pencil drawing beside it, except you’re not thinking ‘this is so cute, at least he tried’, instead you just want to go home and watch the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, without having to go to the cinema and pay an extortionate amount of money to see it in 3D.

 The 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre is held in such high regard because of its ability to shock even forty years after its release (consider, too, its tiny budget of $80,000; TC3D’s budget was roughly 1000 times that). The film has a unique grainy, yellow quality that makes it instantly recognisable and somehow vaguely comforting, but Texas Chainsaw 3D is more in the vein of a Saw movie (in fact, a sequel is being considered even as you read this), and so the beauty is gone and the characters have been replaced by wooden stereotypes who spend more time in their underwear than fully-clothed.

 What is most interesting about Texas Chainsaw 3D, and perhaps its only redeeming quality, is the way in which Leatherface is humanised: as the film unwinds, he becomes less of a chainsaw-wielding maniac, and more of a man who cares for the members of his own family that have fed and clothed him throughout his life, for after all ‘blood is thicker than water’.  Yes, this element of sympathy has been explored before, most obviously in TCM3, but here it comes as a surprise, particularly when the film is just another money-making vehicle for the ‘spectacle’ of 3D, which is itself underwhelming and for the most part unnecessary (a few bloodspurts here and there, and an occasional chainsaw in the face are not enough to merit its inclusion in the first place).

 Other than that, there’s not much more you can say. If you revel in watching teenagers being hacked into unrecognisable pieces and more ass-shots than you can keep count of, then Texas Chainsaw 3D does the job. The acting is alright (note the rooky cop played by Scott Eastwood, son of Clint), the special effects are tolerable and the story is good enough, but overall not exactly worth the admission price.  

Original article: http://www.impactnottingham.com/2013/01/review-texas-chainsaw-3d/