Texas Chainsaw 3D Review

Texas Chainsaw 3D tries to do something fresh and original in a series that has had five sequels since the 1974 original, but halfway through it loses what little steam it ever mustered and stumbles weakly across the finish line.

Texas Chainsaw 3D is a direct sequel to the original, but it advances the timeline up to the present day. The film opens in the immediate aftermath of Tobe Hooper’s classic and shows a lynch mob eradicating the entire Sawyer clan, those devils who harbored Leatherface for all those years. Well, the mob isn’t entirely successful as they gun down and/or burn everyone except for Leatherface and a baby.

Twenty years later, we find that the baby has been raised far away from the Sawyer homeland by a couple involved in the mob. She doesn’t know anything about her family history until she unexpectedly learns she has inherited a mansion down in Texas. Cue a road trip with her friends.

Heather Sawyer (the impossibly cute Alexandra Daddario; it’s her eyes) and her cannon-fodder buddies arrive in the Sawyer mansion and within a few hours unleash a pissed off Leatherface to rampage the countryside. He picks off Heather’s dumb friends in largely uncreative ways. I don’t mind about the loss of her companions; they were such flat and uninteresting characters that their loss is no big deal. They were only in the film to increase the body count. At the least, director John Luessenhop could have made their final moments interesting. Instead, we get kills that are recycled from the first film or are only mildly scary. 

Part of the fun of horror films is to see how creative filmmakers can be in setting up the kill. One of the reasons the Final Destination films are so fun is because of the elaborate and unexpected ways Death comes for each character. In Texas Chainsaw 3D, we get familiar, boring retreads of kills we've seen before.

At the halfway point of the film, Texas Chainsaw 3D actually tries to do something different. See, those evil people in the lynch mob who massacred the Sawyer clan now run the local town. They are hell bent on finishing off the Sawyers, so when they realize Heather is a survivor of that bloodline, they set their sights on killing her. Heather is left with a choice, try to convince the locals that she isn’t evil and help them bring her lunatic, chainsaw-wielding cousin to justice, or side with the maniac.

Turning the tables so that Leatherface is a victim, after we've seen him hack a half dozen people apart, including multiple attempts on Heather? It's a dumb turn of events that kills the last half of the film.

I like the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Tobe Hooper created a small film that tapped into some deep fears. Namely, the fact that a monster like Leatherface could exist and that his family would go to great lengths to protect him. It begged the question: what real life monsters are being protected by their families? Could a maniac be living down the street from me?

None of the sequels have come close to that combination of brutality and resonance, including Texas Chainsaw 3D. It becomes more and more clear with every one of these sequels and reboot attempts that Hooper captured lightning in a bottle back in 1974. Texas Chainsaw 3D simply isn’t entertaining or meaningful enough to stand out. Even when it attempts a fresh wrinkle, it misses the point completely. It is a flat, unimaginative, and mostly forgettable experience. Too bad. I’d love to see another quality Texas Chainsaw Massacre film one day.

2 out of 5 Stars

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