AN UGLY, CYNICAL MESS OF A MOVIE
1
By Broken Headphones
Disgusting, exploitative, pandering, and dumb, "Texas Chainsaw" manages to be all of the above, and then some. It's also offensive. Not in the way the original classic purposely offended with its stark, unflinching brutality, but in the way a movie like "I Spit On Your Grave" offends, in that it has no value other than that of giant dollar signs to the filmmakers. It's offensive in that it seeks to manipulate the audience into siding with the blood-thirsty cannibals over the vigilantes who put them down. And much like "I Spit On Your Grave," the villains are ridiculous Southern white-trash stereotypes portrayed in the same way only people from Hollywood can. When it comes down to it, the movie is a battle of evil vs. evil, and in that situation, who cares who wins? Alexandra Daddario stars as a young woman named Heather who suddenly learns that she has inherited an estate in Texas from a grandmother she never knew she had. So she embarks on a road trip with her friends to uncover her mysterious family roots, and pretty soon she finds herself the sole owner of a lavish and isolated Victorian mansion. But of course, Heather's newfound inheritance comes at a very deadly price when she and her friends stumble upon a horror that awaits them in the mansion's dank cellars…the psychopathic, chainsaw-weilding killer known as Leatherface. A bunch of random people die gruesomely, our central protagonist runs around aimlessly for what practically feels like forever, and the climax fails to resolve itself, like most modern horror fare tends to do. And that's basically it. There's no genuine suspense or tension to speak of whatsoever. Just a lot of mindless screaming, running, and unrealistic, computer-animated bloodshed. This flick is so bland, tedious, and ultimately forgettable that it leaves nothing remotely close to an impact, not even a single decent jump scare. At one point, the plot does try to go in somewhat of a bold direction by making Leatherface this film's anti-hero, but even that's already been done in so many horror flicks before, most notably in the Rob Zombie-directed "Halloween" reboots. Overall, "Texas Chainsaw" is a complete failure of a slasher movie on almost every level. The script is a bore and a chore to sit through, the characters (even the good guys) are all dreadfully annoying, unsympathetic stereotypes, and the abundance of gore grows more begrudgingly pointless as the plot progresses. I can't even say I enjoyed marveling at the blatant stupidity of it all because I didn't. It's just one big, inane, generic mess of a sequel that, by the end, feels like nothing more than a waste of time. If you really wanna watch a satisfying horror film, just rent the original 1974 "Massacre" or even the mediocre 2003 remake. At least pick anything that isn't this boring, non-scary dreck.
