Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)

The "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" series is by far the most confusingly inconsistent and randomly structured horror film franchise in history! Please allow for a natural born horror geek like myself to provide, at the end of this user-comment, an overview. I'm not starting with it, in order not to scare off or put to sleep neutral readers. So, first the review! "Texas Chainsaw 3D" - which I actually saw in regular 2D - is a perfectly enjoyable and extremely brutal trash/gore flick, as long as you manage to overlook the giant gaps in continuity, the complete lack of logic in the script, the blandness of the lead characters and the utterly dumb plot twists. Everything starts out quite incorrect already. The intro supposedly takes place right after the events of Tobe Hooper's original in 1974. The Sawyer-baby who survives the family massacre then receives an inheritance letter in 2012. That would make her at least 38 years old, yet Heather is depicted by the fresh-faced Alexandra Daddario who's clearly still in her early twenties! You know you're in trouble when the director doesn't even bother to do the math. It gets worse when cute Heather decides to go and visit the farmhouse estate in rural Texas that she inherited, together with her adulterous boyfriend and unreliable girlfriend. Heather didn't bother to read her grandmother's letter in advance, so they painfully experience that her maniacal and chainsaw-wielding bastard cousin Leatherface still lives in the basement. Apparently, her grandma (cool cameo for Marilyn Burns) managed to keep his survival secret and his presence hidden all these years, even though the entire redneck town knows what happened and scrutinizes the estate. Following a totally absurd sequence at the police station, we're supposed to believe that the Sawyers were poor victims (even though they slaughtered innocent campers in the 70s and Leatherface still cheerfully saws people in half), while the rest of the town (led by the foul-mouthed Mayor Hartman) are the real psychopaths. I think it's abundantly clear to state that director John Luessenhop and his team of four (!) writers couldn't care less about a half-decent story. For as long as Leatherface is running around with his buzzing chainsaw like an idiot, or when Alexandra Daddario hangs tied up with her shirt unbuttoned, everything is alright for them. And, in all fairness, "Texas Chainsaw 3D" sure does deliver in the blood & gore department. Leatherface's mask may look tacky, but he "does his thing" with the chainsaw quite well. Even in 2D, you can tell that the 3D effects are clichéd and obvious (flying chainsaws, whirring blades coming at you, etc...) but I bet these gimmicks impressed lots of inexperienced horror fanatics wearing their goggles in theaters. As promised, an overview of the bizarre TCM franchise history. In 1974, Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel changed the horror scene forever with their bare-bones but ultimately raw grindhouse masterpiece, loosely based - like so many other contemporary titles - on the sickening crimes of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein. The legendary tagline alone ("Who will survive and what will be left of them") was groundbreaking. Even though the film was an unexpected hit and spawned countless of rip-offs, it took no less than 12 years before the first sequel got released. Tobe Hooper directed it himself and, strangely enough, drastically changed the tone from raw and disturbing to absurd and slapstick. With Bill Moseley stealing the show as Chop Top, Leatherface's role in this sequel is rather limited and he even falls in love at one point! To compensate for Leatherface's supportive role in part 2, the second sequel got named after him. "Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III" came out in 1990, and it's probably the least conspicuous installment of the entire franchise. The series hit rock-bottom in 1994, when the original co-writer Kim Henkel came up the pretty retarded "The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre". Up until this point, the series evolved quite chronologically. But then in 2003 came a (poor) remake of the 1974 original. That film received its own prequel in 2006, rather boringly called "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning", which was a lot better than expected. "Texas Chainsaw 3D" is supposedly a direct sequel to the 1974 original, but in 2017 there came another prequel named "Leatherface". None of the sequels/prequels seem to take into consideration the previous films, by the way. In "Texas Chainsaw 3D", we're led to believe that Leatherface has always been mentally handicapped, but in the 2017 prequel he's depicted as a normally functioning adolescent. Eight films, seven different actors to play Leatherface, but the only one everybody remembers is Gunnar Hansen.

Plot holes plot holes plot holes. And the story doesn't even make any sense

I think the story of this movie is bad including the acting. I'd thought the cast is alright but the clichè is all over the place. It almost like I'm watching Rob Zombie HalloweeN II (2009) again. I gave this movie a 2.5/10 because the death scenes are good but I heard it's a 3D movie but it doesn't feel like a 3D movie.

So this film bills itself as the direct sequel to the original 1974 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, even starting the film using archive footage from that film then continuing it on with a siege at the Sawyer house.The stand off at the house at the start really reminded me of the start of The Devils Rejects but not as well executed. The film then jumps about 20 years to a girl finding out she has inherited a house by a grandmother she didn't know she had so goes on a road trip to Texas with her friends to see it.I went into this film with really low expectation not expecting much at all but I quite enjoyed watching it but it is a very dumb film. So don't go into this film expecting a horror classic like the original. A couple of the dumb moments being the friends leaving a hitchhiker they just met in the house while they go shopping or how the main girl is in a crop top type thing for most of the film so her stomach is always on show and even when given a shirt to put on she only does up the top couple of buttons so her stomach is still on show constantly, even gets her shirt ripped fully open to then only do the top couple of buttons up again, it's very weirdly off putting. The acting is all OK nobody too awful, the story is alright, the first act is very normal predictable stuff, the middle I found quite interesting and then the final act was OK for me personally but it will definitely rub a lot of people up the wrong way I think. Final thoughts being quite enjoyable to watch but nothing special or memorable just don't take it too seriously. 6/10