IN DEFENCE OF: Texas Chainsaw 3D

IN DEFENCE OF
TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D (2013)
By Lisa Fremont


It has come to my attention that the general consensus on ‘Texas Chainsaw 3D’ is one of severe hatred. Now,I was very excited to go see this film in the theatre because it was in 3D. I don’t usually go for the 3D, but the promise of gore and chainsaws coming at me was too much to resist. It was a packed theatre and the audience was having a great time. You know, the requisite screaming, laughing at yourself for screaming, cringing at kill scenes and random yelling at the screen. All in all, it was a wonderfully raucous good time at a horror movie. Is the movie AMAZING? No. Is it something new that we haven’t seen before? Definitely not. Does it deliver gore? Yup. Does it run too long? Nope. Are there scenes of complete audacity that can only happen in a horror film? Definitely. Most importantly, are there backwood hillbilly types who like to take the law into their own hands? Yes and Yes!! If you put all of these qualities together and just forget about the original movie for 92 minutes, you have yourself a tidy, fun, little horror movie.

The movie opens with the last scenes from the original and then goes directly into the 2013 version. This is both clever and stupid at the same time. It’s interesting to see what happened after Sally escaped in that pickup truck,but it simultaneously reminds you how classic that movie is. So, let’s just forget about it, shall we?

The movie picks up with a showdown between the Sawyer family and a group of “concerned” citizens. Here we have our usual country bumpkins doling out justice all in the name of “the good book”. After burning down the house with the Sawyers inside, the men look through the wreckage finding “trophies” and one of them finds a baby. This gentleman decides to take the baby and give her to his wife after he kills the baby’s mother. Fast forward two decades later and we meet Heather Miller the day she learns of an inheritance from a grandmother she didn’t know she had. Heather and three of her friends jump into a van (of course) and travel to Texas to check out her new family estate. Just wait until they find out who’s living in the basement!!

Jedediah Sawyer ,a.k.a Leatherface, survived the hillbilly justice and has been living peacefully in the estate’s basement. Jed begins promptly dispatching of the youth soon after they arrive at the house. We get impalements, bludgeoning, hacking, sawing,skinning of faces and, of course, the, always awesome, running with a chainsaw. The gore is pleasantly over the top and delivers some cringe worthy moments. The jump scares didn’t work on me, but maybe that’s because we’ve seen this story so many times before.

Overall, ‘Texas Chainsaw 3D’ is a popcorn horror movie. It may not deliver anything we haven’t seen before, but it still delivers solid scenes of gore, all of the usual horror movie stereotypes we have come to know and love and it even manages to remind us that Leatherface is, indeed, human. Of course, we are left with the potential of a sequel and I will, happily,see that movie as well. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the horror version of tomato soup and grilled cheese; it’s comfort food. Don’t over think it and just take it for a stand alone film. It’s always a fun and gory ride when you let Leatherface take the wheel.


Follow Lisa on Twitter: @lcfremont

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