Monday, January 7, 2013

Texas Chainsaw (2013)

As a fan of horror movies since adolescence, I've seen and heard of my fair share of classic genre movies. But few have quite the same reputation as Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Just its name alone is a conversation starter, and the movie has spent nearly forty years developing a reputation as one of the most visceral, gut-wrenching horror movies of the '70s.

The movie inspired three sequels of varying quality over the years, and was reimagined in 2003 by New Line Cinema and Michael Bay's production company, Platinum Dunes. But after the lukewarm reception to the remake's prequel, the franchise went dormant. Fast forward to this past weekend, and Lions Gate's resurrection of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre name. Titled simply Texas Chainsaw, the producers took the brave step of not following in the continuity established by Platinum Dunes's remake or even the continuity of the earlier sequels, but instead created a direct sequel to the original movie from 1974. And it's in 3D, to boot. Each of the movies in the franchise have run the gamut from good to bad, so I was curious to see where this one fit in. And you know what? It's pretty friggin' terrible.

The movie picks up immediately following the events of the original movie, and Sally Hardesty's escape from the Sawyer clan has made their murderous activities public knowledge. But before the police can move in and arrest them, a vigilante mob arrives and torches their house. The Sawyer family is presumed dead, but a surviving infant is found by one of the vigilantes and is adopted by him and his wife.

Fast forward to 2012, and the baby is a grown woman named Heather (Alexandra Daddario). She's spent her life being blissfully unaware of the fact that she was adopted, but this illusion is shattered when she learns she's been left an inheritance by her biological grandmother. This grandmother, one of the lone remaining members of the Sawyer family, has left her entire estate to Heather. She and her friends take a detour on their road trip to New Orleans to visit the gigantic house that Heather now owns, but they're in for a surprise when they arrive. The basement of the house is coincidentally occupied by Heather's long-lost cousin Leatherface (Dan Yeager), and he's not exactly happy to see strangers on his property.

I guess the moral of the story is to never get your hopes up. I'd gotten my hopes up and Texas Chainsaw showed up and pooped all over those hopes. It's an unabashedly awful movie that gives off the impression that it was only made because somebody got the rights to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre name and decided to make a little money. There's no passion, no spark to this movie. Had it not been for the presence of Leatherface, it would have been easily mistaken for any one of a million random direct-to-video movies that would premiere on Syfy on any random weekend. And all truth be told, those Syfy movies would probably be more entertaining than this.

The movie was directed by John Luessenhop, and if Texas Chainsaw is any indicator, then I'm not really going to rush to see any of Luessenhop's other movies. You would think that a horror movie would want to be suspenseful or scary, but nope, none of that is here. More than a few attempts at jump scares were just taken directly from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so the only way they would be effective at all is if this is the only movie in the franchise you've actually seen. It's not just scares that Luessenhop steals liberally, but he borrows certain camera angles as well in what I'm guessing was his attempt to pay homage to the first movie. But just because Tobe Hooper had Leatherface drop somebody on a meat hook, or had a girl pop out of a freezer, or had a low-angle tracking shot where some girl's butt took up a lot of the frame doesn't mean that your Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie should have those too.

The movie doesn't even really look that appealing, either. I said before that it felt like it would have gone direct-to-video or been produced exclusively for Syfy, and a lot of that is because the movie looks like those kinds of movies. It has this weird veneer to it that makes it look like it doesn't belong anywhere near a movie theater screen. I've read that the movie had a budget of eight million dollars, but it honestly looks like it was half that. Everything has a "blah" look to it, like the production designers just couldn't be bothered to care. And if the people making the movie don't care, I really can't be bothered to care either.

And you know who else doesn't care? The writers. The script is credited to Adam Marcus, Debra Sullivan, and Kirsten Elms, and not one of the three contributed anything worthwhile. There are no likable characters whatsoever, thus providing no emotional anchor point for viewers to latch onto. There's not even enough to get me to root for Leatherface to kill everybody. There is absolutely nothing going on to get me to feel anything about the movie other than "is it over yet?"

The whole script is just a mess, full of inconsistencies, wasted opportunities, and overall stupidity. Take, for example, the scene where Leatherface chases Heather into a local carnival. The scene only goes two or three minutes and they barely do anything with it. You're writing a 3D slasher movie with a scene in a carnival and you can't come up with some worthwhile gags? That's as much Lussenberg's fault as it is the writers, but you'd think that they would so something with it.

There's also a subplot where Heather's boyfriend is cheating on her with her best friend, and it goes nowhere and contributes nothing to the movie outside of a chance to see Tania Raymond ― the actress who plays the best friend ― in her underwear. The subplot isn't played for any "oh no, will Heather find out?" drama and it isn't even referenced beyond one or two scenes, which just renders the whole thing pointless.

And how about the whole "blood is thicker than water" thing? The final act of the movie sees members of the vigilante mob that killed the Sawyers now trying to kill Heather just because she was born a Sawyer. Never mind the fact that she was a baby when it all happened and didn't even know the Sawyers existed until the beginning of the movie (and didn't know any of the gory details until much later). I guess we're supposed to view them as the bad guys because Heather didn't really do anything wrong, which I understand. But then Heather decides to show Leatherface a little sympathy and starts helping him. Yes, he's a psychotic cannibal that butchered all her friends and spent much of the movie trying to kill her, but they're cousins so all is forgiven? That is stupid.

And the biggest thing of all is that the movie's time frame is all over the place. The movie establishes that the "modern day" stuff takes place in 2012, but considering that the original movie explicitly states it takes place in the summer of 1973, that would put Heather at nearly 40 years old. It wouldn't be a big deal if the character (and the actress herself) wasn't depicted as being in her mid-twenties. Are we supposed to assume that the original movie takes place in the '90s? You can't argue that this movie takes place in the '90s, because they didn't have iPhones back then (plus the movie says outright that it's 2012, to boot). I'm sure Lussenhop considered that, because the year is obscured every time the date of the first movie is mentioned. But the whole thing just feels like they couldn't be bothered to put forth any effort at all.

I can actually say the same thing about the cast too. The ones that are trying just aren't very good at all. R&B singer Trey Songz is particularly bad, as he's so stiff and wooden that it seems like just standing there is beyond his abilities. I was also disappointed by Dan Yeager as Leatherface,. He honestly doesn't have much screen presence at all. Yeager didn't feel all that monstrous or intimidating, which is saying something considering he's playing a 6'6" cannibal swinging a chainsaw and wearing somebody's face as a mask. I will say, though that I liked Alexandra Daddario's performance. She was better than this movie deserves, playing her part with enough strength and conviction to make it work. It's just a shame she didn't have better material to work with, though.

Not even the movie's much-promoted 3D effects are really worth talking about either. There are only a few instances where the 3D works well, mainly the bits where Leatherface points his chainsaw right at the camera. But outside of the occasional "push stuff at the audience" moment, nothing is added outside of an extra surcharge onto the ticket. There's so little depth added that you could honestly watch the movie in 2D and barely notice any difference. If a 3D Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie was something that really needed to exist, why not just do a conversion of the original or the remake and re-release it in theaters? I'd have much rather seen one of those instead of this piece of crap.

So yeah, I guess you can tell I thought Texas Chainsaw sucked. It still doesn't top Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation as the worst movie in the series, but at least that one had Matthew McConaughey's hilarious overacting to make it worthwhile. This movie didn't even have that. I'd heard that it was supposed to have been released in October but was ultimately postponed to this month, and considering January's reputation as a dumping ground for Hollywood's less-than-stellar genre movies, I can't say I'm really all that surprised. Believe me, Texas Chainsaw is less than stellar, alright. Long story short, this movie sucks and you'd be wise to avoid it. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to watch one of the other Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies and get this nasty taste out of my mouth.

Final Rating:

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