TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D - REVIEW

Oh boy...

Just when you think a franchise can't sink any lower...

That Michael Bay-produced remake was just what I expected it to be: dumb, annoying, shot like a music video, missing the point of the original completely. I frankly couldn't stand that movie. Then, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning came out and, as unnecessary as it was, it was surprisingly not that bad. It still ripped off Tobe Hooper's first film to death but it was harmless enough as far as random prequels go. Then we get Texas Chainsaw 3D and, shockingly, we get what is quite probably the worst of the bunch!

Boy I'm glad we rebooted that franchise!

Aren't you?

The film opens on blurred, cheaply 3D-ed footage from the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre film and although they've somehow managed to make it look rubbish, it's still good enough to put you in the right mood. We're then brought forward to just after the events of the film and it turns out that a bunch of stuff happened after the massacre which I can't see making sense with all that occurred in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 but whatever: a baby is stolen for some flimsy reason and we cut to present day. Turns out the baby, who was part of that old twisted family we all know and love, has grown up to become an attractive but idiotic puppet-like young woman. When she is told her real grandmother whom she's never even met or known about has died and left her some house in Texas as part of her inheritance, she picks up two of her equally annoying and idiotic friends, her uninteresting boyfriend and drives all the way there, picking up a clearly dodgy hitchhiker on the way, that goes without saying. What follows is the usual shtick: each expendable character gets picked off one by one when it's discovered Leatherface still lives in that house, local law enforcement is found to be cartoonishly evil, yada yada yada...

But what makes this one particularly awful as opposed to, say, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, is how poorly the film is overall executed and how unlikable those characters truly are. From the first moment you meet them, you want them dead. The performances in this movie are ALL absolutely abysmal, it's really quite impressive. Luckily, the film remembered the remake's primary and only contribution to cinema: Jessica Biel's ass. So, here we have tons of gratuitous butt and breast-friendly camera angles to keep those more easily-entertained viewers happy. Plot-wise, it seems to ignore that entire Matthew McConaughey flick and all the other movies except for the very first one and manages to tell a story that makes just about no sense at all. An entire scene follows a cop, on his own, following bloody tracks inside Leatherface's house with an iPhone, filming the entire thing in total darkness yet it comes out in tip top quality on the screen. That's just one stupid example but trust me, every scene is riddled with inconsistencies,  unintentionally funny dialog and goofy shit. Our main character trips more often than that killer from Scream! The ending is absurd, the practical effects are at times laughable, the CGI is lame, the 3D is a waste, I could go on but to cut a long story short:

It's a bad movie, really bad.

That said, it's one of those bad movies you can actually laugh at whereas the remake was just dull and annoying so, in a way, this isn't the worst of the bunch? Based on how badly executed all around it is as a film, though, it kind of is.

Avoid.

Unless garbage amuses you.