A few years ago, the good people over at Lionsgate felt that at least one more film could be cobbled together from the remains of one of the original slasher killers, but didn’t think that making another remake this soon would be a very good idea. Not one to NOT beat a dead horse, they decided to make a SEQUEL to the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre instead. The strangest thing about this one though is that Tobe Hooper who directed the original and its sequel came out and supported this film during its initial release, claiming it to be a true follow up in both story and quality to his horror masterpiece. Has Tobe Hooper sold his soul in order to pump up the sales of a subpar film, or does this really capture the spirit of what made the original so iconic? Considering the title ends in 3D, I’m gonna guess the former, but the only way to find out for sure is to keep on reading!!
The movie begins with a recap of the key scenes from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. So not only are you claiming that this is a direct sequel to the original film (which there already IS ONE), but you’re gonna have the balls to flat out show us scenes from that horror classic? It’s a common known ‘rule’ that you should never show a better movie in the middle of your crappy movie, and the fact that the creators of this one started it off by doing that leads me to think this is either gonna be better than the first one, or a spectacular disaster. Oh who am I kidding? IT’S GONNA SUCK!!!! Once we’re through with the stock footage, the movie begins right where the original left off. Hold on now, I wasn’t expecting that! We actually get to see the consequences of what happened after the Sawyers fucked those kids up! The local sheriff does indeed drive up to the Sawyer residence and demands that they bring out Leatherface (real name Jed Sawyer). Now the Sawyers are those real asshole FUCK THE GOVERNMENT BUT GO AMERICA type red necks and refuse to let one of their own be taken away just because he butchered a couple people. We get to see the entire Sawyer family inside the house getting their guns ready to fight the sheriff if it comes to that, except that NONE OF THESE PEOPLE WERE IN THE ORIGINAL FILM!!!
Now if I recall (it’s been a while), there were four members of the Sawyer family. Letherface, his brother (the hitchhiker), his oldest brother (the guy who owned the gas station), and their grandpa. At this point, the hitchhiker is dead which leaves three Sawyers left who were a party to the monstrous events of the original film. I’ve counted, and there are nine mother fuckers in this house. If we exclude the three who were in the previous film (Leatherface, gas station guy and grandpa) as well as the baby, that’s five people who were nowhere to be seen in the last movie, but are willing to take up arms against the law in order to protect the homicidal maniac living in the basement. Actually, that’s not completely true because after some consideration, they decide that handing Leatherface over to the sheriff is probably the best option. Okay, so maybe this will be like the Halloween remake. I actually like that movie and thought that the first half was really interesting where we see Michael Myers essentially grow up in a mental home. Maybe we’ll get some more insight into why Leatherface does what he does. Oh no, wait. A shit ton of red necks just rolled up and are ready to enact some vigilante justice.
These fucking guys are priceless, epically their leader. They roll in whopping it up and brandishing shotguns despite the sheriff’s insistence that they GTFO. The guy leading the vigilantes says they’re only here to help the sheriff, but when the sheriff reiterates that they all split, the guy flat out refuses to leave! So much for assisting if you can’t even do the ONE THING the guy told you to do! Not only that, but one of them throws a fucking Molotov Cocktail, which devolves the situation into a shootout. I love the sheriff here too who’s all “you guys better listen to me” but doesn’t lift a damn finger.
So he doesn’t arrest anyone there because apparently murdering a family is okay in Texas as long as you’ve got a mob doing it. Later that night, several upstanding members of the community are picking through the remains of the house for random shit to steal when one of them comes across the sole woman in the family who’s still alive and clutching her baby. The guy takes the baby, shoves his might boot upside her face, and leaves her for dead next to the burning wreckage that used to be her home. Okay, so obviously Leatherface isn’t dead yet. Does this mean we’re gonna follow his journey for revenge after what happened and will try to get the baby back? Nope! We jump ahead to modern day with the baby all grown up and where horror movies have become stale, repetitive, and unscary. Oh joy. Actually, let’s take a moment to talk about the time jump. The movie is now set in modern day because everyone has smart phones and what not, but the baby is only about 22 years old. Considering that the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the movie this is a DIRECT SEQUEL TO) was set in 1974, that would mean the girl would have to be approaching forty. But we can’t have that, right!? Why would we want to see a horror movie that stars anyone else but a barely legal chick and her dopey friends!? COME ON!! That could have been at least SOMEWHAT of an interesting take on this! When was the last time someone over thirty was the main character in a slasher movie? Halloween H20? No, this movie just wants to do everything by the fucking book apparently. So the somewhat grown baby (Heather) receives a letter in the mail informing her that her grandmother has died and that an inheritance is waiting for her in Newt Texas. This comes as a shock to her considering her parents never told her she was adopted and when she confronts them, they tell her not to go to Newt. The problem is, they don’t tell her WHY she shouldn’t go!
How about “You’re family was a group of homicidal maniacs who the local towns people torched an indeterminate amount of time ago”? I’m pretty sure THAT would dissuade her from going, or at least dissuade her from fucking STAYING!!! Despite the annoyingly vague warnings of her parents, she gets three of her friends to hope into a van with her and head down to Texas. By the way, the references in this scene are fucking obnoxious. They’ve got a van. They pick up a hitchhiker for no reason. There’s a dead armadillo on the side of the road. WE GET IT!!!
More pointless reminders of a much better fucking movie. Hell, I’m not even referring to the original. THE REMAKE is better than this! So they eventually make it to Newt and find Grandma’s old house which is apparently a fucking mansion. WHAT!? Oh it gets better, not only is there a damn mansion associated with this family (that I guess the vigilantes didn’t think to burn down as well), but the family lawyer pulls his car up less than thirty seconds after the kids arrive. No seriously! How long was he waiting for them!? It’s not even like he was waiting for them at the house. He drove his car up less than a minute after they got there, meaning he was staking out the house from his car for who knows how long.
I’m gonna go ahead and spoil something that we find out much later in the film because it’s very fucking relevant to this scene. So it seems kinda obvious that Grandma had Leatherface inside the house somewhere for the past twenty years (or maybe 38, who knows), and that when the kids go inside he’s gonna rear his ugly head to cause chaos, right? Here’s what’s not so obvious. The god damn lawyer KNOWS ABOUT LEATHERFACE!! Do you think that he warns them that there’s a homicidal cannibal living in the basement of this old lady’s swanky homestead? NO!! Oh no wait, there’s a letter from Grandma that he gives to Heather and tells her to read. Oh well then, I guess there’s no fucking reason to tell her now!! IT MIGHT BE IN THE LETTER SHE MAY OR MAY NOT READ!!! He gives her some documents, a set of keys, his business card, and the letter from Granny, and then just fucks off to go somewhere else. Uh lawyer dude, doesn’t she at least have to sign some stuff before moving in, or are you gonna let her and her friends trash the house before you get around to that? They go inside the huge fucking mansion and explore the place. It’s not like the Sawyer farmhouse where there were creepy bones and shit hanging around everywhere. It’s a legitimately awesome mansion that’s got a lot of really cool stuff. Of course they’re gonna stay and party, wouldn’t you? Heather also visits the graveyard that’s on the property where she finds the graves of the Sawyers from the last movie, as well as those of her mother and grandmother. The grandmother’s headstone also confirms that this takes place in 2012, meaning Heather should be 38 but whatever. The group eventually decides to go shopping for some supplies while they leave the hitchhiker alone to keep down the fort. I’m sorry, what?
Sure enough, he immediately starts robbing the place for all it’s worth, and eventually finds his way down to the SECRET basement which for some reason he thinks is gonna hold some epic loot. I don’t know; something about the lack of proper lighting, the giant fucking steel doors, and the plates full of half eaten food doesn’t lead me to think that the nice shit is gonna be down here. Oh well, maybe it’s that line of thinking that’s holding me back from being a truly great homeless dude like this guy is. Of course Leatherface comes out of the shadows and fucks this guy up. We’re you expecting anything else to happen?
We cut back to the rest of the crew who are finishing up their shopping. Heather gets hit on by Clint Eastwood’s son (seriously) who’s playing a local cop. Not only that, but the town’s mayor shows up (the leader of the vigilantes from the beginning of the movie) who finds out who she is and tries to no so subtly get her to sell him the house and leave town. Of course, he doesn’t bother to TELL HER why she should leave ASAP, but why would he? It’s not like we’re in a movie that makes any fucking sense! The kids make it back to the mansion, notice the place has been worked over by the hitchhiker, and go ahead with the party anyway. One of the guys (Kenny) is cooking up dinner when he finds the secret basement as well, and runs head first into Leatherface. Kenny tries to escape, BUT HE DOESN’T KNOW HOW STAIRS WORK!!!!
Of course the kid gets caught and is dragged down to Leatherface’s basement while no one else in the house hears his blood curdling screams. Oh wait, there’s music playing that must be drowning everything out. Sure, whatever. We cut to Heather’s boyfriend (Ryan) who’s playing pool when Heather’s female friend (Nikki) busts in claiming that she saw something horrible. And now it’s time for another lesson in SHITTY HORROR MOVIE MECHANICS!! She didn’t actually see anything scary. This is obviously some sort of trick on her part and the boyfriend isn’t gonna see anything horrifying. Do you know how I knew this the first time I saw it? Okay yes, it’s an obvious misdirection (we just saw something horrible happen so we think she’s reacting to that), but there’s another thing they do to completely kill any suspense. When she comes into the room and starts screaming and freaking out about something bad happening, the music keeps playing. Think about it. If something bad HAD happened, the filmmakers would have had the characters turn off the music, or they would have put in some spooky music to heighten the tension. Since neither happened, we can assume that nothing bad actually happened (that she’s aware of). It’s shit like that that keeps most blockbuster horror films from being scary anymore. They’re so fucking overproduced and cliché ridden that even the sound design (or lack thereof) can reveal a movie’s intentions and spoil any sort of surprise. Sure enough, she leads him to the barn and points out a covered dish in the middle of one of the stalls. He lifts it up, finds a bottle of tequila, and turns around to find that Nikki has stripped down to her underwear and is ready to fuck his brains out.
Alrighty then, throw in the cheating boyfriend and evil girlfriend tropes as well. Like we didn’t need anything else to make this movie any less original. Heather is off exploring the house while her remaining friends are doing something really shitty towards her, and eventually comes across the recently dug up body of her grandma. Wait, when did Leatherface have time to do that? Were the kids out shopping THAT fucking long!? Heather runs downstairs freaking the fuck out and finds Leatherface cooking up a tasty meal in the kitchen.
So did Grandma not tell Leatherface that someone new is gonna be coming to the house and that he probably shouldn’t kill them? Did Grandma WANT Heather to die or something? Leatherface knocks her out and drags her unconscious body to his basement. Once she’s awake he grabs the still alive Kenny, put him on a meat hook, and does the one thing this franchise is expected to do.
I’ll admit that the movie really does pick up at this point. A chainsaw is a very effective weapon to use for horror movies and they do a decent job with it here. It’s one of the few weapons that have a scary sound associated with it and it’s much more believable and visceral of a murder device than something like a machete which really can’t cut through bone the way movies pretend it can. The practical effects as well are quite good, especially in the scene above where he cut the poor bastard in half. The thing is that while Leatherface and the chainsaw are in fact menacing here, they still use so many stupid fucking tropes that really kill the momentum every time they pop up. For example: Heather escapes while he’s cutting her friend in half (Leatherface obviously didn’t feel the need to restrain her in any way) and tries to run out of the house. What does she do on her way out though? SHE FALLS DOWN THE STAIRS!!!
It’s stupid shit like that throughout this entire sequence that brings the one bright spot in this movie down a few pegs. After getting up, she runs to the graveyard (instead of to the front gate) and somehow trips over the knee high wall. Instead of going THROUGH the graveyard, she instead decides to hide inside Grandma’s now empty coffin. GENIUS!!! No wait, the opposite of that. Leatherface isn’t as stupid as he looks though, and starts to carve up the coffin. Fortunately for our hero, Leatherface gets distracted by Ryan and Nikki coming out of the barn and decides to kill them instead of the lady right in front of him in a place that she can’t escape from. The two of them notice the homicidal nutjob wielding a power tool and run back into the barn, barricading it from the impending attack. While Leatherface is working on the door, Nikki grabs a nearby gun and shoots him through the door. No wait, she says a one liner AND THEN shoots him through the door. “Welcome To Texas Mother Fucker!”
Nikki clearly didn’t hit Leatherface, but nevertheless he backs off for a bit. Then the van comes crashing through the doors being driven by Heather who moves over to let Ryan drive for some reason and the three of them drive off into the sunset. Oh no wait, Ryan rams the van into the front gates which were fucking opening (it’s automatic) but was too impatient to wait for them. The car then decides to fucking stall because… I don’t know. My knowledge of cars is nonexistent, but I didn’t see any fucking damage to the van after it bounced off the gate. This gives Leatherface just enough time to barely make to them before the van roars back to life and they speed off again! Only they don’t. It’s weird, they get through the gates, turn to the left, but then they just stop. I think he might have taken too sharp of a left turn and felt that he needed to stop while straightening out the steering wheel, but come on! You can risk getting on the fucking grass for a bit while trying to straighten the car out!! Because he took the time to do this, Leatherface fucked up one of the wheels and the car ends up flipping a little bit down the road.
Ryan’s dead, probably because he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt, and Nikki appears to be injured a bit which makes it hard for Heather to get them both out of the wrecked car. Leatherface jogs his ass over there and starts to terrorize the two remaining girls, but before he can land the finishing blow on Nikki, Heather escapes and starts antagonizing him. Not one to take an insulting lying down, Leatherface forgets about his completely defenseless target and instead chases Heather through the woods. She quickly arrives at a carnival which is odd because it means they were holding it not too far from what the town considers to be the freak house. Odd planning, but it’s not like something bad could ACTUALLY happen right!? OH WAIT!!
Yeah, Leatherface makes it to the party and does surprisingly little damage considering he’s a chainsaw wielding maniac in a densely populated location. For some reason, his one and only target is Heather who runs her ass through most of the carnival grounds and once again decides the best thing to do is to back herself into a corner.
Things don’t look good for our hero (for about the third or fourth time at this point) but luckily Dirty Harry Junior shows up and tells Leatherface to drop the chainsaw. Poor choice of words though, because Leatherface chucks it right at that motherfucker!!
Yeah, Scott Eastwood just ducks the chainsaw and then we see Leatherface run into the woods like he’s fucking Zoidberg. I almost expected him to go “WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP!” So all that was pretty bad, but here’s the thing; the movie hasn’t begun to suck. I know. It’s hard to take in. Listen, up until this point it was just a run of the mill, bone headed slasher film. It has its moments where the gore kicks into gear, and overall it’s… not awful. Trust me, even though the first hour isn’t anything I’d call “good” it’s still leagues ahead of what’s going to happen. So it’s sometime after the carnival incident (I’m thinking about an hour) and Heather is at the police station. We also find out that the Sheriff from 1974 is still the sheriff and that he sent ONE COP (not Eastwood Junior) to take a look at the overturned van. I mean, don’t cops usually have PARTNERS!? The cop doesn’t find any bodies left where the van crashed which means that Leatherface presumably grabbed the corpses and dragged them back to his meat dungeon. We cut back to the police station where Heather tells the sheriff who she is and the sheriff in turn assures her that everything is going to be alright. Oh, and Eastwood Junior has a giant fucking box with EVIDENCE on the side that contains detailed records of the mass slaughter of her family back in 1974. Okay…
The mayor gets to the police station (the douchebag who led the vigilantes in 1974 if you don’t recall), who proceeds to… well be a shitty southern mayor. He’s full of piss and vinegar, starts cussing out the sheriff, and best of all doesn’t believe that the motherfucker running around with a chainsaw wearing someone’s face as a mask is the guy they never confirm to be dead who used to run around with a chainsaw wearing someone’s face as a mask. Oh no wait, it gets even better. Remember the solo cop who was checking out the van looking for survivors? Well he just arrived at the mansion and is asking the sheriff if he should go in. Now the sheriff is obviously concerned about the fact that the guy is all alone with no backup against a guy who’s killed dozens of people, but Mayor Shithead over here demands the cop goes in to investigate. Honestly, I can’t feel too sorry for the cop who’s way too gung ho about taking on the chainsaw dude with his little pea shooter.
While we’re watching this dumbass walk straight into a bloodbath, we periodically cut back to Heather who was left in a room all by herself with a giant fucking box of evidence, so she naturally starts digging in for answers. We spend several minutes watching her pour through all this stuff, except we’ve already SEEN all this. Nothing in this evidence box is anything we don’t already know, but the movie lingers on specific piece of evidence, photos, and my favorite TEXT! Just zoomed in text of words like Sawyer and Slaughter! WE GET IT!! We already got it before you showed us this stuff! The scenes with the cop is are at least more interesting because they’re stupid and hilarious to watch. FIRST OF ALL there’s a blood trail a mile fucking long. There’s a decent walk from the gate to the mansion, and there’s just oodles of blood along the way. Once he gets in the house, the blood CONTINUES To be smeared in large quantities all the way to Leatherface’s basement. THERE’S NO FUCKING WAY THAT TWO BODIES HAD THIS MUCH BLOOD IN THEM!!!
SECOND OF ALL the Mayor has demanded the cop give him a constant video feed of what’s going on, so the dude is holding a fucking IPHONE while searching this house for a homicidal maniac! I’d think an activity like that would be best done with TWO hands, but what the fuck do I know? Besides, what the hell is the video even for? Is the mayor going to valiantly spring into action if he sees shit go south? The cop spends the next five minutes just wandering through Leatherface’s death basement until he finally comes upon a freezer. He opens it up, Nikki springs out, and the cop shoots her in the face out of shock. Good job. I’m glad you sent this fucker in alone to handle the situation. Also, the scream was obviously added in post. You can tell by the way she plays the scene that she was gasping for air, and the scream does not sync up with her mouth movements. For some reason, the video feed just fucking stops at that point so now the Mayor doesn’t have a direct line of communication (except for the fucking RADIO) and decides the best thing to do is to grab his boys, roll up on the mansion, and torch the mother fucker like he did to the Sawyer farm. Great plan, except YOU ALREADY TRIED THAT!! The sheriff says hell no but fuck him because he’s completely useless throughout this entire movie. We cut back to the cop who runs into Leatherface and gets killed immediately. Yeah, how’s that gun of yours working for you now? The guy didn’t even have a fucking chainsaw!
We cut back to the sheriff who I THINK is planning on doing something bad to Heather, but she has since left the building. As a parting gift though she wrote “murderers” across a picture of the vigilantes with a red pen that I guess she found somewhere. I bet there were about ten black sharpies she passed over because red would REALLY give this message some impact! The sheriff once again shows his complete lack of power and authority by telling the mayor to NOT hurt an innocent person but the mayor completely ignores him. DO SOMETHING SHERIFF!! Why the hell is this dude the MAYOR considering he murdered a house full of people right in front of you!? He should be rotting away in a maximum security prison, but instead he’s wearing stupid cowboy hat and is pushing you around. We cut back to Heather who’s running towards a payphone (for some reason her shirt is 90% unbuttoned), and she calls up the lawyer from earlier to meet her somewhere where they can talk. Before that though, we cut back to Leatherface who’s doing that one thing Leatherface is known for which is to cut someone’s face off and sow it on his own. It’s drawn out and pretty unnecessary, but the effects are quite good here.
We cut back to some bar where Heather and the lawyer are talking, and the guy confirms that not ONLY did he know EXACTLY what was waiting for them inside the basement, but what the town had done and that they MIGHT NOT appreciate her coming here to the point that they might fucking KILL HER!! Oh, but Granny wrote a note so it’s all good then. BULLSHIT!! HOW COULD YOU NOT FUCKING TELL HER!?!? Ugh, that’s not the only thing that’s wrong with this scene. The lawyer paints Leatherface (Jed Sawyer who is her cousin) as someone with the mentality of an eight year old which I don’t know about you but I’m not aware of that many eight year olds that are into CANNIBALISM!! We also found out that Granny told Jed that someone from the family would be coming soon to take care of him, but didn’t bother to show the guy a fucking PICTURE OF HER so that MAYBE he wouldn’t try to murder her on sight like he does with everyone else! Also, why the hell would ANYONE expect this girl to show up one day and decide “yup, I’m gonna take care of a brain damaged psychopath for the rest of my life”? It doesn’t seem that Granny really thought this shit through. Maybe you could have started by telling Jed to NOT murder everyone in sight? Could you have tried teaching him THAT in the last twenty (or 38) years!? The mayor shows up at the bar looking for Heather (I think the bartender called him) and Heather escapes through the back. Unfortunately, she runs right into a fucking car!!
Now admittedly the car WAS trying to hit her, but it’s not like it blindsided her. SHE WAS RUNNING RIGHT AT IT!!! The mayor’s lackey driving the vehicle tries to grab her, but she stole a knife from the bar and cuts the mother fucker across the face. She escapes for now and runs into Eastwood Junior driving around on patrol and explains the situation to him. He promises to take her back to the bar so she can check on the lawyer, but the guy just keeps driving past it (the lawyer sees her in the back of the car). Uh oh! What’s going on!? Eastwood Junior gets a call and it’s from the mayor, who he informs that he’s got Heather with him! Not only that, but Eastwood Junior is the son of the mayor!! BUM BUM BUMMM!!! The mayor orders Young Eastwood to take her to the local slaughterhouse which can’t be good news for our hero. We cut back to Leatherface who’s pushing the cop car into his barn when the mayor’s voice comes over the radio. The mayor is apparently stupid enough to assume that the officer is still alive, and that revealing where he’s going to murder an innocent person over the radio (assuming the cop is going to hear it without confirming he’s on the other side) is a good fucking idea. That said this is the motherfucker who didn’t burn a box full of incriminating evidence at any point in the last twenty (or 38) years so maybe he really is that stupid. Leatherface now knows where the “intruder girl” is and wants to take her out. I THINK he also hates the mayor but I’m not entirely sure if killing him is part of his plan. We get an amazing little scene where Leatherface goes to his giant fucking weapons locker to grab a chainsaw and a tie for his night on the town. Something about this scene makes me laugh. I almost expect him to say “Groovy” after picking out the right chainsaw.
We cut to the police station where the lawyer is informing the sheriff about Heather being in a police car, and the sheriff deduces that they’re headed for the slaughterhouse. Okay, so we’ve got three opposing forces headed for a single location, and all of them are after the one girl. The crooked mayor and his lackey’s want to kill Heather (for some reason), Leatherface wants to kill her (and probably anyone else who’s there), and the good cops want to stop all this from happening. Sweet! This is what we call a climax! Eastwood Junior is the first to arrive and ties up Heather to some pipes, while also ripping her shirt open. Then again, it wasn’t that hard to rip considering SHE ONLY HAD ONE OF THE BUTTONS BUTTONED!!!
Eastwood leaves her alone to wait for the mayor outside (why not wait INSIDE where you can still see her?) which gives Leatherface an opportunity to come in and take her out. He stops though when he notices that she has a birthmark in the shape of the Sawyer crest. I think what happened was that her mother had a necklace on during the fire, and the insignia ended up burning onto Heather’s chest. However she got it, Leatherface now knows she’s part of the family and cuts off her restraints. At this point, the mayor and his main lackey (the one that hit Heather with a car) come in starts beating the shit out of Leatherface which is a good thing IMO, even if the two of them are dicks. Heather escapes and runs out the slaughterhouse (Eastwood Junior is nowhere to be seen), but then stops.
…
You know where this is going right? Oh it’s definitely going there. She turns around and runs back into the slaughter house to rescue her poor sweet cousin from those mean men! Look, vigilante justice shouldn’t be condoned and I could go with her in trying to prevent that from happening. That’s not what she does though. It’s not like she calls the cops or tries to get them to stop. She grabs a fucking pitchfork and starts stabbing mother fuckers!!
While she’s taking care of the lackey, Leatherface is slowly being dragged into a chopping thingy by a chain that’s wrapped around his neck. Heather grabs Leatherface’s chainsaw, tosses it to him and says (I swear this is true) “Do your thing Cuz!”
Wow this just got unbearable. Leatherface somehow removes the chain around his neck (without using his chainsaw) and the mayor decides that taking him on with a CROWBAR is a good fucking plan.
Leatherface kicks the mayor’s sorry ass and shoves him into the chopping thingy which looks fucking terrible because it’s entirely CG. That’s pretty disappointing considering that the one saving grace about this film was that the practical effects looked pretty good.
Oh, and guess who finally showed the fuck up and saw this entire thing go down? The sheriff who’s ALL BY HIMSELF!!! Okay, so he knew that shit was going to go down at the slaughterhouse (presumably the death of an innocent woman) yet he decided that backup wasn’t needed!?!? Yeah, and the sheriff proves his ineffectualness again by just telling the two survivors (Leatherface and Heather) to clean up their mess. HOMICIDAL, CANNIBALISTIC, CHAINSAW WIELDING, PSYCHOPATH!!!! Responsible for no less than FIVE GOD DAMN MURDERS in the last few hours, and the sheriff just lets him go. Fuck this movie. Heather takes Jed back to the mansion and tries to clean him up. He won’t take off the fucking mask though and just goes back to his little hidey hole in the basement. Heather finally takes this opportunity to read the letter that Granny left her which explains fucking everything. The movie throws in a really weird cameo here with Marilyn Burns playing the grandma who we see in flashback and is narrating the letter for us. In case you don’t know, Marilyn Burns played the surviving girl in the original movie (Sally) who we saw already saw at the beginning in the flashbacks to the original film! That’s just weird to me. I guess the fucking up timeline here means she wouldn’t look like Sally would at this point, but casting her in this is still really strange and distracting. The movie ends with Heather deciding to stay at the house and to take care of Leatherface from now on, instead of maybe calling the cops, getting him in a mental institution, or any number of things that would make any fucking sense.
HOLY SHIT was this bad. The first hour was pretty lousy but at least didn’t do anything outright insane. It stayed at a basic level of barely passable competence (occasionally dipping into outright awfulness) which led to a forgettable but inoffensive film. That last third though throws in some really stupid fucking shit at us which makes no god damn sense at all. It’s another one of these movies where they want to pretend their smart by trying to get us to root for the villain, but it just doesn’t fucking work here. We know who Leatherface is and that no matter how much of douchebag the mayor is, he’s still the worst person in this movie. He’s killed innocent people in violent and brutal ways, but the movie still wants us to root for him. This can actually work though! That’s the thing that kills me. Freddy vs. Jason has Jason play the nominal good guy in the fight, but there’s not a moment in the film where we’re supposed to think he’s just as dangerous and evil as Freddy is. It’s just in this instance he’s pointed in the right direction. We don’t get that here. Heather warms up to the guy despite the fact that he cut one of her friends in half right in front of her. She’s now protecting him from any consequences of his actions because “they’re family”. Again, I COULD see that working as maybe the pilot to a tv show or something. Leatherface is in the basement and the last remaining (sane) member of the Sawyer family has to keep him from escaping while also making sure that no one knows he’s there. You could spend time to flesh out their relationship and to give us a reason why she chooses to do this. Here though? There’s no fucking way you’d buy it. All her friends who came down here are dead. They have parents who are probably gonna be looking for them, and Heather is just gonna keep that a fucking SECRET!? Her loyalties lie so much to the Sawyer family now that she’s willing to give up everything to protect this guy who REALLY needs some fucking help instead of just being held in a basement like a caged animal. I don’t like it. It was to fucking sudden, makes no god damn sense, and just drags this movie down considerably. Outside my problems with the third act, it’s just too generic to praise in any other way besides it’s occasional use of practical effects. The acting isn’t great, there are too many clichés here, and the story in that first hour is way too predictable to be scary. Oh yeah, THIS IS A HORROR MOVIE THAT ISN’T THE LEAST BIT SCARY!! All that said. I still kind of recommend you see it. It’s fucking stupid as hell, but that makes it kind of fun to watch. This is definitely one of those “so bad it’s good” movies where it’s enjoyable to just sit back and marvel at what the fuck is going on. It’s not a good movie, but if you’re looking for something silly I’d give this one a shot.
The Reviewers Unite 
Bring this movie back on Netflix plez I like it an miss watching it all the time so plez
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