TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D Review - Only the second worst TEXAS CHAINSAW movie

In the history of horror films, I don't think there has been a franchise raped like the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE franchise. The original film was made back in 1974, followed by a sequel twelve years later. Then there was a third and a fourth that no one really cares about, but only the true horror fans remember that the fourth one starred Renee Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey. Never forget.

I'm not the hugest fan of the franchise, but I can respect it. And when it was remade back in 2003 with Jessica Biel and the chick from BLAIR WITCH 2, I thought it was a decent remake. There's a lot wrong with it, but I can dig it as a horror flick. Then the "prequel" to the remake came out in 2006, and this film was released just this year. I'm a little bit late to the parade, but you guys will understand that it isn't necessarily a bad thing to be late to this one.

TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D has a really misconstrued timeline. The opening scene takes place right after the original 1974 film ends, then jumps ahead 20 years in time where suddenly everybody has iPhones. It completely abandons what happened in TCM 2, 3, and 4, but they consider this part of the remake's series. I think. I don't know. They really raped this franchise.

But the timeline is the least of the problems. TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D is a poor excuse for a sequel. The script is truly terrible, the editing is awful, and the cast is extremely horrendous. Not only that, but the kills are so fucking uninspired. Everything about this movie is uninspired. If you can take anything from TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D, anybody can make a movie, no matter how bad it is.

Like I said, TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D begins with flashback scenes of Gunnar Hansen trying to kill people from the original film. Sadly, this is as scary as this film gets. But Hansen gets his paycheck anyway, because he plays Boss Sawyer. The opening scene takes place right after the 1974 film ends, and Sheriff Hooper (Thom Barry) is trying to tell the Sawyers to release Leatherface (Dan Yeager) to the police. A few hoodlums, led by the mayor Burt Hartman (Paul Rae) burns down the house with everybody inside.

Then one of the townspeople (David Born) find one of the Sawyers outside holding a young baby. He takes the baby and murders her mother, and raises the baby. In this time, nobody notices that all of the sudden he has a baby. But in twenty years time, Heather Miller (Alexandra Daddario) has gone from being a redneck sack-of-shit defenseless baby to a sexy chick.

Heather gets a letter in the mail saying that her grandmother has died and left her a huge fortune that she has to travel to Texas to retrieve. She gets into a hissy fit with her parents over never telling her that she was adopted. Her parents apologize, blaming a destroyed uterus. No seriously, they do. And that's only one of the bits of screenwriting that is terrible.

Anyway, Heather, her boyfriend Ryan (Trey Songz), her friends Carl (Scott Eastwood) and Nikki (Tani Raymonde), and this hitchhiker they accidentally hit with their car named Darryl (Shaun Sipos) go to get this fortune, which ends up being a huge mansion with a grave yard, a pool table, and a letter that gets ignored. When everybody goes out into the town to get steaks, Darryl decides to ransack the house of candles and silverware. The clan comes back, and Darryl's not there. They don't realize he is in the basement getting chopped up by Leatherface, who occupies the bottom floor.

And everybody else succumbs to the wrath of Leatherface. So when Heather escapes finally into a carnival, Leatherface ignores everybody running past him and just keeps his eyes on her. The police are able to get him away, yet Heather is soon to realize that the Mayor gets word of this situation and puts together a crew to execute Leatherface and the rest of his family. The rest of his family = Heather, who is revealed to be Leatherface's long lost cousin.

To be frank, there really isn't a moment in TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D that is interesting. The characters are really unlikable and dumb. All of the movie could have really been avoided if the letter was read, but I guess a horror movie wouldn't be a horror movie without dumb choices. TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D then dives into some poor subplots, including one where Ryan is cheating on Heather with her best friend Nikki. It never gets resolved and is kind of useless.

Then there is the change of the plot, which is completely ridiculous. All of the sudden, Heather has to make a choice between siding with the police and the Mayor or helping out her blood relative, who killed all of her friends and her cheating boyfriend, but that's not important at all. The aforementioned carnival scene too is probably the WORST scene ever in a TEXAS CHAINSAW movie. This is including the one in which Matthew McConaughey screams, "Welcome to my world!"

I watched the film in 2D, so I can't really compliment or hate on the 3D. But from what I could tell just from watching the 2D film is that a lot of the scenes were shot using the 3D gimmick. The shots include the obligatory chainsaw coming through the screen and things being thrown. If you're a fan of ducking at a chainsaw coming at you, get the 3D version.

The cast is a bunch of untalented actors, and that is putting it nicely. The lead actress Alexandra Daddario is beautiful, but is a terrible actress. Unfortunately, the filmmakers have lowered their standards on trying to show her titties. Scott Eastwood doesn't die soon enough and Tania Raymonde, who played Alex Rousseau in LOST, features a similar fate that her character did in the television show. And Trey Songz is as good as an actor as he is an artist. Hint: He is a terrible artist.

By the way, the soundtrack is pretty uninspired as well. Trey Songz plays pool to a Trey Songz song. I can't make this shit up.

The TEXAS CHAINSAW franchise is a place now where horror movie ideas go to die. TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D is no exception. I could live the rest of my life never watching a sequel to these films ever again, but there will be more made. In a few more years, I expect to see the sequel to this film, and I can only hope that TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D 2 features Chris Brown getting slashed.