Texas Chainsaw 3-D

Rating: *1/2

You have to at least admire them for doing something original: instead of being another remake, or a sequel, it's a continuation. Yes, someone had the bright idea that there was literally still more story to tell following the end credits of Tobe Hooper's seminal slasher film classic released in 1974. Forget that a movie with the name "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" doesn't really require any kind of overarching mythology, but nearly 40 years after it's release and numerous sequels and remakes and sequels of remakes, is there actually any more room left to cover?

The answer is no. Texas Chainsaw 3-D is silly and pointless gore with thinly drawn characters and even more ridiculous plot twists that if you don't see them coming than it must be because you're so dazzled by all manner of 3-D stuff flying at the screen. Of course seeing a movie like Texas Chainsaw for emotional storytelling is like reading Playboy for the articles, so let's skip any anticipation that we're going to be seeing, at the very least, genre-defying material, let alone Oscar-calibre work.

The movie assumes that after Sally escaped Leatherface's saw at the end of the original Chainsaw, the townspeople gathered up their torches and pitchforks... And guns. And Molotov cocktails. ...And went to the Sawyer farmhouse leaving no one alive. That is except for one baby girl who's taken by a couple involved in the scouring of the Sawyer farmhouse and taken to live in a new town, under a new name. The girl, Heather (Alexandra Daddario), grows up and one day receives a letter that she's inherited some property from the grandmother  of the family she never knew, but what she really inherits is - a deadly legacy. Dum, dum, duh!

Oh, and obviously Leatherface survived too because there would be no movie with out a gigantic man wearing a rubber suit made from people's skin and brandishing a rusty chainsaw. But like all attempts to cash in on the renowned and accomplishment of Hooper's film, the money invested takes away one of the big things that gave the original much of its charm: poverty. The Hooper film was made on the cheap, so all the night shots are nearly completely pitch black as they lacked both the lights and the power generation in the middle-of-nowhere, Texas to fix it. Everything was beat up and shabby, and all that blood might as well have been real as the small group of inexperienced actors had a look as though they were actually being terrorized; if Texas Chainsaw Massacre wasn't an actual snuff film, it came darn close.

But in this version, the only thing cheap is the gimmick. There are key chase sequences that take place in a carnival and at a meat packing plant, both elaborately designed sets, the costs for which could have funded 10 Texas Chainsaw Massacres back in 1974. Most of the cast is completely wasted playing characters that are either cliched or so one-dimensional that they barely make any impact at all. You'd expect that the four different screenwriters on the project might have been able to, at some point, create some interesting drama besides people being chased by lunatics with chainsaws, but alas their creative juices may have been squandered just trying to get the idea off the ground logically.

But it's not all bad. I will say that somewhere in here is a movie I want to see. The one that is kind of being hinted at in the end where Heather does something where if she had done it when she was supposed to it could have saved the lives of her friends. I guess, "supposedas" are par for the course in horror movies, but why not lead with your one good idea? Obviously, the cliffhanger will lead nicely into more sequel potential, but honestly, if you can't get one Chainsaw Massacre right, why bother making more?