I blame myself. I mean what was I thinking having such high expectations for ‘Texas Chainsaw 3D’. The only expectation I or anyone going to see this should have is “oh boy, this is going to be the biggest piece of crap I have ever seen…EVER”. With that said what you’re about to read is a giant spoiler so if you actually want to see this sorry excuse for a horror movie, I suggest you stop reading now. For those of you smart enough to take my advice and skip this one, let’s recap this sucker!
WARNING! THIS IS A RECAP OF THE FILM AND CONTAINS SPOILERS!
Directed by John Luessenhop, the film opens with a few clips from the 1973 original to give the audience a refresher course. My guess is most of the people in the theater, all of which seemed to be in their teens, had never seen the original, so kudos to the filmmakers for giving this little flash into the past. New scenes are then added (still set in 1973) as Sheriff Hooper, played by Thom Barry, approaches the Sawyer family home stating “some girl says your boy slaughtered all her friends!” He pleads with the family to send the “boy” out (and for all of you not catching on yet, he’s referring to Leatherface). The family is hesitant at first, but finally agrees to send him out but asks that he receives a good lawyer and isn’t harmed. Cue the town hicks and rednecks as they decide to reign their own form of justice on the Sawyer family as they are lead by Burt Hartman (Paul Rae). They shoot everyone and burn the house to the ground, assuming all inside are either burned to death or the victims of a gun shot wound. But wait! The plot thickens!! One hick in particular, Gavin Miller (David Born) stumbles upon a young Sawyer woman with a little baby girl in her arms as she lays dying pleading to Miller to help them. He kneels down to take the baby and then kicks Miss Sawyer to death – what a stand up guy. He gives the baby to his equally dim-witted wife, Arlene (Sue Rock), as she apparently can’t have children and is delighted as they sneak away with the baby, like thieves in the night. The baby is said to be ‘burned’ from the fire the townies had set but no actual marks are shown at this time. Once all are thought to be dead and gone the hickabillies sift through the rubble and find Leatherface’s beloved chainsaw and decide to take it as a trophy and “hang it up in the bar” but not before taking a victory picture of all who participated in the massacre of the Sawyer family.
Flash forward to circa now as we come upon sexy meat-cutting (wow guys really?) Heather played by Alexandra Daddario. She takes a break from her meat packing and chats it up with BFF Nikki, played by Tania Raymonde who is instantly depicted as the slutty friend, when she takes liberties with her uniform by only buttoning the bottom buttons which puts her rack on display for all to see. Heather goes home with some tiny bones that she starts putting into some kind of art project she’s been working on, as her boyfriend Ray (Trey Songz) states “I thought we were going to stop bringing our work home with us.” This is obviously the writers attempts to connect Heather to her murderous roots of being a Sawyer (very subtle people, I don’t think the audience would have gotten that the lead character is in fact the infant baby we first met at the beginning of the film). Apparently the writers of this movie think the people who are viewing this flick are idiots, and honestly anyone who goes to see it is in fact an idiot (myself included) because they include the pivotal scene of Heather receiving a letter which states she has been left a large inheritance by a grandmother she never knew existed in Texas, but she has to go there to claim it. Confused Heather goes to see her hick parents where they tell her the shocking truth. ACK! SHE WAS ADOPTED!! Sullen Heather is met by her awesome friends back at her house since her oh so sweet Ray told them about her saddening news and knew she would want them there for support. Awwwww, what a dreamboat! They all agree to take a detour to Texas so Heather can claim what is rightfully hers.
Along the way they meet hitchhiker Darryl who conveniently is hit by their VW van and asks for a lift. Right away this guy seems like a sleaze ball but the more the merrier of course! Once they get to Texas, they meet the Sawyer family lawyer Farnsworth, played by nice guy Richard Riehle, where he tells Heather about her grandmother Vera (who incidentally played sole-survivor Sally in the 1973 original) and that she has written Heather a very important letter about the mini-mansion she has left her. It has to be said that one of the best ‘worst’ scenes of this whole film takes place here, when Nikki and Heather decide that instead of getting back into the VW van to drive up to the house, they will walk very slowly behind it – this is where we get a VERY close up shot of Nikki’s ass. I guess they felt the need to include more explicit slut shots of Nikki’s behind because the shots of her taking off her shirt, Heather’s exposed midriff and cleavage just weren’t enough.
Farnsworth states one of the conditions of her inheritance is to not sell the house and to read the letter Vera left her. But, of course, Heather doesn’t and she and her friends go into sensory overload as they explore the house and all of its luxurious spoils. They decide to stay the night because the “house is just too cool” so they go into town to get supplies, leaving Darryl at the house alone. He lives up to his sleezyness and starts to ripoff anything of value he can find, but his curiosity and greed gets the better of him as he goes deep into the belly of the house and opens a secret locked door thinking he’s about to uncover the motherload. Instead, Darryl is met by still alive Leatherface and has his skull bashed in. He is then dragged into Leatherface’s mancave. At least they kept the sliding silver door like the one from the first film – that was at least a little redeeming.
When Heather and her friends are in town, they meet now mayor of Newt, our old pal Burt Hartman who wants to buy Heather’s estate off of her hands oh so desperately. Heather also meets a cute deputy, Carl and we find out that Nikki and Ray have had ‘relations’ behind Heather’s back and Nikki is looking to get seconds. As they return to the house they realize that Darryl was a douchebag and stole from them not only family heirlooms but the set of keys to the house. Little do they know he’s dead underneath their feet, but something tells me these guys are going to find that out very quickly. Lower-rate friend/’trying-to-get-into-Nikki’s-pants’ guy Kenny, begins to cook dinner for everyone but is distracted by none other then the secret door Leatherface is behind. He soon meets his doom when he finds what is behind the poorly hidden door and is hung up on a hook when Leatherface has his way with him. In other words, HE KILLED KENNY.
The three remaining house guests are still upstairs and unaware of the death or existence of Leatherface yet. Nikki takes advantage of the size of the house and lures Ray out into a barn to ‘come and see! Its so f**ked up!’, and Ray being the stand up guy that he is races after her to take a look. Low and behold the romantic picnic setup Nikki has created for them, complete with hay and a bottle of tequila with two shot glasses. You my friend, are one classy lady. She then takes off her clothes and states ‘I told you it was f**ked up’….the director lets our imaginations run wild after that as we cut back to the house as innocent little Heather is still all alone exploring. While on her wondering she finds the dead body of her granny still upstairs in her room, looking peaceful but still shocks poor Heather into running around the house screaming about her discovery. Up comes Leatherface and the cat and mouse chase scene begins! Heather runs into the family’s graveyard and climbs down into what is supposed to be Vera’s grave (whoops) hoping Leatherface will pass her by. Let me say now that throughout the film they state over and over that Leatherface is slow, stupid, dim and basically implies that he’s a “simple” boy who doesn’t know any better and should be given a break. Well if he’s so freaking stupid how come he outsmarts and finds every single hiding place these idiots can think of? <Insert deep sigh here>.
Leatherface starts to blast his way through the coffin with his chainsaw but Ray and Nikki are startled by all the commotion outside the barn (where their tryst is taking place) and draw the attention away from the coffin as Leatherface takes chase to them instead. They lock him out but since the door is made of wood, it doesn’t keep him out for long. Nikki finds a shotgun in the back of a truck (mystery as to how she knew it was there since it wasn’t even the car) and shouts ‘welcome to Texas Mother F**ker!’, one of the only semi-funny quotes in the entire film. Congrats whore. Heather saves the day though when she crashes through the barn doors in the VW van so they can all drive away and make their escape from the face mask wearing psycho. Dim Heather doesn’t seem to notice or care that Nikki is wearing nothing but Ray’s shirt and Ray was just getting his pants up when she blazed in. Oh well. Leatherface catches up with them though when they crash into the gate of the house and then – da da da dooooooommmm -their car stops working. Leatherface gets a few good cuts in and slashes one of the van’s tires but when the gang finally gets it to start working again, the scraping from the missing tire somehow causes the van to flip over and crash close by. Ray dies as the glass of the windshield basically cuts his head off, but Nikki and Heather are still alive and try to run away. Heather makes it out but Nikki’s fate is left uncertain as she remains in the van and Leatherface chases after Heather instead.
We now come upon a very random carnival taking place. Heather hops a fence to get to it but Leatherface follows closely behind. Onlookers don’t realize right away that Leatherface is a crazed murderer and not just an actor at the carnival pretending to be a character. The sheriff is notified and Heather gets away (for now) when she is taken into custody. Meanwhile the Sheriff sends a cop out to the house to see if there are any other survivors. Once the Mayor finds out his ol’ nemesis is out on the loose again he goes to the police station where Heather is being held and she demands that the Sheriff take action and burn the house to the ground again (because apparently that worked so well the first time around). The cop at the Sawyer house decides to go on Facetime, that’s right people, Facetime – so that the Sheriff and Mayor can see what’s been going on at the house. This STUPID cop decides he knows better than the Sheriff and decides to go down into the secret room where he discovers all of the dead bodies and a banging noise coming from the meat freezer. He opens it up and finds rattled Nikki stuffed away for safe keeping but he’s so shocked by her presence in the freezer that he accidentally shoots her in the face. No loss there. Leatherface then finds this gem of a cop and kills him fittingly but the fate of this poor fellow is the worst all of the victims. Leatherface decides he’s sick of his current mask and decides the face of the cop would be better suited for him. He slices and dices all the while this poor law enforcer is still twitching away, clinging onto the last stages of life. You should have listened to the Sheriff, pal!
Meanwhile, the Sheriff has the bright idea to leave Heather alone in a room where she can change out of her blood stained shirt with a great big box of evidence from the original murders that rocked the small town of Newt so many years ago. Heather goes through it all (shocker) and does some deep soul searching after she finds out what they did to her family and writes ‘murderers’ across the infamous photo that was taken of all the hillbillies that hosted the Sawyer family BBQ. She leaves the police station, how she got past all of those cracker jack cops we’ll never know, and meets up with Farnsworth who is offering up information on who Leatherface is and what her past was all about. The Mayor starts to chase Heather who runs out of the bar, but is met by deputy Carl where he convinces her to get into his car so he can drive them both to safety. Its revealed, however, that Carl is in fact the Mayor’s son and has other plans in mind for Heather, like taking her to a meat packing plant.
The plan is to coax Leatherface into following them to this super spooky location where they can kill him and her once and for all. They tie Heather up and gag her (oh and did I mention that she has ZERO buttons done on her shirt and isn’t wearing a bra at this point? Way to get that on last sexy shot in there!). Once Leatherface gets there a light-bulb goes off and he realizes that Heather is (SPOILER!) in fact his long lost cousin once he see’s the super tiny burn mark on her chest that looks like an ‘S’ from the necklace all of the Sawyer women used to wear. He takes the tape off of her mouth and she begins to shout at him that she’s his cousin which works like a charm as he revs up the chainsaw and cuts Heather free. While this family reunion is taking place, the Mayor somehow gets a chain around Leatherface’s neck and he and a fellow hillbilly beat Heather and Leatherface almost to death. Heather gets away though when hillbilly #1 goes to turn the meat grinder on but is impaled by Heather with a pitchfork. At least she’s embracing her roots! She then goes back into the room where the Mayor is slowly pushing Leatherface into the meat-grinder but not before she slides the chainsaw over to Leatherface and yelling, and I quote, “Do your thing cuz!” You just cant make stuff like this up, its too ridiculous.
We conclude with Leatherface freeing himself and then cutting off the legs of the Mayor and pushing his redneck ass into the meat grinder, ending their feud once and for all. The Sheriff watches all of this go down but instead of taking them into custody, he simply tells Heather to clean her mess up. The two cousins walk home and Heather FINALLY reads the letter that was supposed to be so important from her grandma Vera. Enclosed is the ‘S’ necklace that Heather puts on immediately and the letter is about 3-5 lines long, clearly the length of a letter that was meant to save peoples lives. Vera goes on to say basically “this is your house now, your cousin is in the basement, take care of him if you want, its your decision”. And stay to take care of her cousin Heather does. The End.
To sum it all up – the gore is bad, the acting is terrible, the plot line makes me want to die and anyone involved in the original movie that had some part in this film should be ashamed of themselves. The only thing that wasn’t predictable is that all of the guys died first. Usually it’s boy-girl-police officer, etc. The main thing that was predictable was the costumes chosen for the ladies of the film and how they were always salacious in some way. Shout out to Bill Moseley who played Drayton Sawyer (original cast member Jim Sideow died in 2003) who is always a horror fan favorite.
Well there you have it, I saw this awful movie so you, dear readers, don’t have to. Let’s hope this film isn’t setting the stage for all horror movies of 2013 cause I think we’ll all want to gouge our eyes out or lower our IQ’s by 100 points to enjoy them. If you saw the film and thought it was as bad as I did, let us know in the comments section below. If you saw the film and thought it was good, please stop eating the paste and don’t forget to watch your ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians’ marathon.
