Saturday, January 12, 2013

A Really Late and Lazy Review of Texas Chainsaw


What else do I say except that this review may contain some spoilers.  Texas Chainsaw is supposed to a horror film set around the events of the very first film back from 1974.  The first film was a classic horror film, relying on the scares and the suspense to frighten the viewer; there was almost no blood and almost everything happened off-screen.  How does a studio release a follow-up 39 years afterward?  Do you start from scratch and imply what happened prior or do you show what happens moments after the first film ends? The film opens up reminding you of the events of the Tobe Hooper classic and kicks off from there.  From there I immediately fell in love with it.  I loved how the film was daring enough to implement a sequel to a film nearly forty years old when the target audience only knows about the one with Jordanna Brewster?  But my love for the film died faster that many of the victims by the hand of Leatherface



Remember when I called the film daring?  I lied.  The film opens up with the last minutes of the first film, which completely disregards the ‘real’ sequels.  Thom Barry plays the local sheriff who tries to bring Leatherface into custody.  However, an angry mob storms in and burns the Sawyer house to the ground leaving only three people alive: Loretta Sawyer, her daughter, and Leatherface, though everyone thinks he’s deceased.  Blah, blah, blah, her daughter grows up oblivious to what happened to her, something happens and she meets Leatherface.  Oh, and the leader of the angry mob is now the mayor.  Yeah, I know. 


The death scenes in the movie are not great but some sight gags will make few turn away.  Leatherface cuts a face off of a guy, cuts a guy in half, stabs a guy with a meat hook, cuts some dudes legs off and even cuts off some guys head.  But each one is done with some form of CGI blood, the worst kind of blood for a movie.  The direction is god-awful with gratuitous low camera angles to show off an actress’s bosom.  And it occurs more than once.  It’s not that I had a problem with it, but it was distracting.  I’m trying to get scared but I was just staring at booty. 

The cinematography could’ve been done by a drunk monkey.  Horror film? Ok, throw in some brown, gray, lots of shadows, and make sure that each shot has no depth to it. 

Do I really need to discuss the acting?  Also, the film is really torn between who we should root for to win.  The mayor is the bad guy but what about Leatherface?  The two are going at it but why do the filmmaker’s insist that we root for the psychopath especially when violence in films is the newest hot button issue?  I didn’t like the film at all, no matter how many times the film tried to redeem itself. 


P.S. The 3D is post conversion so stay clear away from it.  

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