Texas Chainsaw
/"Family's a messy business. Ain't nothing thicker than blood."
Filmology Rating: 1.75 out of 4
If you’ve never seen a Texas Chainsaw movie before, don’t start now. This latest installment (reboot?) has very little positive about it. The story is strange but still predictable. The acting is pretty awful. The scares and gore are standard. One major issue I have with this movie is the timeline. This movie is supposed to take place roughly twenty years after the original 1974 movie, making it 1994. However, the town they are in looks modern, the clothes are modern, and everyone is using a smart phone, so it’s 2013? Overall, this movie did nothing for me, and I love the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Rating: Skip It
-Megan
I first saw Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2010 and I found it to be one of the most terrifying experiences I have ever had while watching a movie. The rawness of the acting and the effects made the film always captivating and horrifying. The film surprisingly has little gore and relies more on the creepy family dynamic that Leatherface and his family have. Just thinking about the dinner scene now sends shivers down my spine. So I was intrigued about a new film continuing the story of Leatherface in the same continuity as the original film.
Heather Miller, played by Alexandra Daddario, wants to leave her home with her adoptive parents because she feels she doesn’t fit in anywhere. Heather finally gets her wish when her estranged grandmother passes away leaving her their Texas home. Heather decides to leave with her friends Ryan, played by Trey Songz, Nikki, played by Tania Raymonde, and Kenny, played by Keram Malicki-Sanchez, to go collect her inheritance. The road trip doesn’t go off as easily as they would have hoped when they run into hitchhikers, vengeful mayors, and cannibals. Will Heather survive the trip or will she end up as someone's meal?
I need to state my first thoughts while leaving the theatre now; this film is silly. While some consider the original film to be darkly comedic, this film offers no dark moments unless you are talking about the lighting. Texas Chainsaw features chainsaws being thrown at characters, characters going on a ferris wheel to escape a killer, a sheriff who wants to see cannibals walking freely around his town, honestly I could continue, but I think I made the point that this new film is not in the same continuity as the original film. The film even tries to show that the entire Sawyer family was at the house when the events were occurring in the 1974 film. At least twenty people all huddled up in the house waiting to taste flesh. The family clearly must have been hiding in the paper thin walls, but even if I were to forgive that, I simply cannot forgive the timeline.
Alexandra Daddario is 26 at the time of this publication where any character who was born around 1974 would be around 40. Now if Daddario looked like she was in her late 30s I could let this pass but she looks like she just turned 21 in the film. The filmmakers might be trying to claim that the film takes place in the 1990s but the characters clearly have smartphones and since I was alive the during the 1990s I know that the fashion senses of the characters are completely off. Some might claim this to be overly critical but if you want to try to watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Texas Chainsaw back to back you will find yourself scratching your head as to how this film universe functions.
The story, even for a horror film, must always be the most important aspect of a movie. If the story falls flat, then the rest of the film falls with it. Perhaps this film would have been enjoyable in a world where you don’t have films like Scream and Trick r Treat, but we do. We must expect more out of horror films, especially when they are released on thousands of screens for the entire world to consume.
Rating: Skip It
-Jonny G