Tobe Hooper’s 1974 film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, was so grimy, moody, and startling that it’s become something of a modern classic, making new fans as the decades roll on and continuing to inspire tons of horror movies that have come after it. Not only have there been TCM sequels, but there are just a legion of slasher films that have sprung up since, and they all owe a little something to what Hooper’s film was able to accomplish with just a small budget and a complete lack of decency. Heck, the final scare in any haunted house worth its salt is pretty much always a guy popping out with a chainsaw, and the credit for that has to be largely given to how much TCM has stuck with everyone.
This new film from director John Luessenhop, Texas Chainsaw 3D, ignores the fact that there have already been further TCM movies, and acts as a direct sequel to the original. It starts with the slaughter of Leatherface’s family, follows the development of the one member of the Sawyer clan who escapes the culling, and details the horrible things that happen when she comes of age and gets reunited with her killer relative many years later. In some ways Texas Chainsaw is unique among slasher films, but in others it sticks frustratingly to formula.
The reason it looks exactly like every other slasher movie you’ve ever seen is that it follows a group of partying college kids who head out to a rural location and then details their systematic slaughter, exactly like they all do. The dialogue is pretty terrible, the acting is passable at best, and there isn’t really any strong filmmaking on display. It’s unique, however, in that it manages to develop its lead character, it takes a unique turn in its third act, and it actually surprises you a bit with the way it’s able to shift your allegiances from character to character over the course of its run time. Ultimately these deviations prove to be a bad idea that take a lot of the luster off of the Leatherface character and show why deviating from formula is such a risky proposition, but at least there’s something unique going on. Still though, in a world where Cabin in the Woods has given us the perfect, Meta explanation for why every slasher movie is the same, was a pretty great slasher movie in itself, and seemingly put the whole genre to bed, a sequel to a film from 1974 that’s already had plenty of followups and seen plenty of imitators is going to have to do an awful lot to prove to a burnt out audience that it’s worth their time, and Texas Chainsaw doesn’t get the job done at all, 3D or otherwise.
