Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)
October horror madness continues with something from 2013. Ah, 2013. The year I graduated, and the height of the unnecessarily 3D movie.Texas Chainsaw 3D is the epitome of that redundancy - there is literally no reason for this movie to be in 3D. There is some blood that flies and at one point someone throws a chainsaw. That's the quality of 3D movie we were pumping out in 2013.
For all its flaws, I love the original 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's a great example of the Big Fucked Up Family movie. For some reason, I was under the impression that this Alexandra Daddario led movie was the remake, rather than a direct sequel. If you ignore the fact that none of it makes sense temporally, it's a pretty interesting way of doing the usual "same idea but this time 3D" sequel. Daddario plays Heather, who as a baby was taken from the Sawyer household as the town's citizens set upon them in vengeance for their penchant for murder (Leatherface, most notoriously) and raised not knowing her true identity. This time around, the road trip to Texas takes place in order for her to inherit the house left to her by her real grandmother
Aside from Daddario, this group of travellers are...painful. Say what you will of the 1974 cast, but I would take Franklin being a whiny jerk with a distinctive personality over Trey Songz's halfhearted involvement in this project. Pretty much every character in this movie is the worst, and very few of the actors have the energy to pull it off. It's one of the few times I've ever seen Scott Eastwood play a character and gone "hm, yes, this feels like the correct fit for his smug bastard persona". Even the decent people are pretty flat, and I guess it's to heighten the moral ambiguity of the movie and our very few audience surrogates (Heather and Sheriff Hooper) that it's set in a world where you really don't care who dies because reality is so heightened and all of the people who exist are such asshole caricatures.
Leatherface remains a fascinating character in the horror canon, and I'm glad he got a little more characterisation here, even amongst the sheer stupidity of the writing around his character. Also, I'm glad he had time for an Extreme Makeover while he was locked away in his basement. Good for him.
Rating: 4/10 - A completely average horror movie with okay gore and middling story, but a couple of cool additions to some long standing horror mythology.
For all its flaws, I love the original 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's a great example of the Big Fucked Up Family movie. For some reason, I was under the impression that this Alexandra Daddario led movie was the remake, rather than a direct sequel. If you ignore the fact that none of it makes sense temporally, it's a pretty interesting way of doing the usual "same idea but this time 3D" sequel. Daddario plays Heather, who as a baby was taken from the Sawyer household as the town's citizens set upon them in vengeance for their penchant for murder (Leatherface, most notoriously) and raised not knowing her true identity. This time around, the road trip to Texas takes place in order for her to inherit the house left to her by her real grandmother
Aside from Daddario, this group of travellers are...painful. Say what you will of the 1974 cast, but I would take Franklin being a whiny jerk with a distinctive personality over Trey Songz's halfhearted involvement in this project. Pretty much every character in this movie is the worst, and very few of the actors have the energy to pull it off. It's one of the few times I've ever seen Scott Eastwood play a character and gone "hm, yes, this feels like the correct fit for his smug bastard persona". Even the decent people are pretty flat, and I guess it's to heighten the moral ambiguity of the movie and our very few audience surrogates (Heather and Sheriff Hooper) that it's set in a world where you really don't care who dies because reality is so heightened and all of the people who exist are such asshole caricatures.
Leatherface remains a fascinating character in the horror canon, and I'm glad he got a little more characterisation here, even amongst the sheer stupidity of the writing around his character. Also, I'm glad he had time for an Extreme Makeover while he was locked away in his basement. Good for him.
Rating: 4/10 - A completely average horror movie with okay gore and middling story, but a couple of cool additions to some long standing horror mythology.
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