Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013) [Blu-ray 3D]
Horror | Thriller
***PLEASE NOTE: A Blu-ray 3D disc is only compatible with 3D Blu-ray players.***
Tagline: Evil wears many faces.
In 1974, enraged townspeople hunt down and kill every member of the Sawyer family for committing a series of grisly murders. Decades later and hundreds of miles away, a young woman learns that she has inherited a Texas estate from a grandmother she never
knew she had. After embarking on a road trip with friends to uncover her roots, she finds she is the sole owner of a lavish, isolated Victorian mansion. But her newfound wealth comes at a price as she stumbles upon a horror that awaits her in the
mansion's dank cellars...
Storyline: After the first massacre in 1974, the townspeople suspected that the Sawyer family were responsible. A vigilante mob of enraged locals surrounded the Sawyer house, burning it to the ground and killing every last member
of the family. Decades later a young woman named Heather learns that she has inherited a Texas estate from her grandmother. she decides to bring her friends along on the road trip to invesitgate her inheritance. On arrival she uncovers she has inherited a
mansion but is yet to uncover the terrors that lurk in the basement below it. Written by Tom Thomas
Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, , May 9, 2013 -- Any horror film aficionado knows it's next to impossible to keep a nefarious villain down. Even when it appears the bad guy has expired, it's a standard horror trope
to have him (or occasionally her) spring suddenly back to life for one last shock before the final credits roll. But a number of horror franchises have taken almost ludicrous steps at times to keep their chief baddie coming back to wreak more havoc, a
trend that might even be traced back to one of the most iconic horror films of all time, Frankenstein , where the first film ended with what one presumed was the death of the Monster. Bride of Frankenstein was just the first of many sequels
that proved that the Monster wasn't quite dead yet. This "survivor's syndrome" returned with a vengeance in any number of much newer franchises, to one degree or another anyway, with a number of iconic villains returning to slice, dice and
otherwise maim folks in series like Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, not to mention the many Saw films. Saw in fact evidently helped to inspire the latest in what has been yet another long
running franchise with a seemingly indestructible villain, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and its ubiquitous follow-ups, for once the rights to the original story reverted back to the original scenarists, things were set for yet another reboot.
Texas Chainsaw 3D is, according to an interview included on this Blu-ray as a supplement, simply the first in what is planned as a six film series that is planned to be by design Saw-like in its (no pun intended) execution.
Texas Chainsaw 3D makes some relatively smart decision in attempting to reboot this vaunted franchise, not the least of which is revisiting the ending of the original film, albeit with newly filmed footage. While that decision is laudable,
giving the audience context and a plausible through line, its actual execution ultimately leads to some (hopefully unintentional) laughs, as a series of people walks into Leatherface's lair and meets with a grisly demise. There's just something downright
funny about this quasi-montage, where one person after the other calls out the previous victim's name, only to be attacked and summarily pummeled and/or hacked to death. The film then picks up with the burning of the farmhouse and the supposed
death of Leatherface (see the above paragraph for how that turns out). One of Leatherface's kin is nursing a small baby, and while the mother expires in a gruesome shootout with the locals, her tiny infant survives.
Flash forward about twenty years and that infant has grown up to be Heather (Alexandra Daddario), a young woman who was adopted by the man who actually killed her mother and who has no inkling of her storied past. That all changes when Heather's
biological grandmother dies and leaves her a large estate in Newt, Texas, something that forces Heather's adoptive parents to confess the truth—or at least as much of it as they're willing to come clean about, which includes no salient information about
the horrifying murders Leatherface perpetrated nor any information about the deaths of Heather's own extended family in the resulting shootout. Heather is understandably distraught to have this sudden revelation thrust upon her and decides to leave for
Texas immediately with several of her friends in tow.
She's met in the town by Farnsworth (Richard Riehle—I'll have more to say about Richard a bit later), who hands over the keys to the kingdom and quickly beats a path out of there, obviously only too aware of the history involved. Heather and her friends
then begin exploring the premises, where something of a repeat of the opening montage happens, where at least a couple of characters venture into the basement, only to discover—well, guess. Let's just say Leatherface wasn't quite dead yet, if you
catch my drift.
The central section of the film plays out pretty much as you would expect it to, with Leatherface capturing and horribly mutilating various victims. We of course have the requisite scene of frisky couples frolicking sexually only to meet their demise, and
we have yet another unintentionally funny sequence where Heather finally comes face to face with Leatherface, is momentarily knocked out, but then wakes up and attempts to escape, managing to trip and/or fall over an unlikely series of items, all of which
allows Leatherface to get up close and personal with the terrified woman.
The film does do a couple of relatively interesting things, however. As the third act gets underway, Heather becomes completely aware of her family's history and realizes that Leatherface is in fact her cousin. She begins to realize that the townspeople
of Newt were collectively responsible for the deaths of (most) of her family. There's a palpable shift here in the film's depiction of who's the good guy and who's the bad, and there's actually one surprising revelation concering a supporting character
who turns out to have a family connection which was previously undisclosed. Heather and Leatherface become unlikely allies in the closing moments of the film, obviously setting up things for the already announced sequel.
While a lot of Texas Chainsaw 3D is just laugh out loud ridiculous, it can't be denied that there are a fair number of chills scattered throughout the film. Some of these are just downright cheap (an LFE effect late in the film is attached to a
simple scene of Leatherface touching Heather, something that produces the expected startle effect but which seems awfully manipulative), but quite a few are shudder worthy, including a couple of really graphic scenes of Leatherface going to work on
various victims with his chainsaw. The film also has some intentional humor, some of which works quite well. After a climactic showdown with one of the bad guys, only the villain's hands remain above a pit. Leatherface looks down and casually kicks
them in to where the rest of the mangled corpse lies, obviously "cleaning up" his dirty work.
I mentioned Richard Riehle above and want to spend just a moment on this great character actor, one whom many of you would recognize by face if not by name. It just so happens that Richard grew up across the street from my wife in a tiny town outside of
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Richard was kind of the "leader" of the neighborhood kids, and Richard's younger sisters often babysat for my wife and her siblings when they were little. Richard came to a reunion of my wife's family in Los Angeles a few years ago
and he's a wonderfully genuine, low key individual. He's been in a lot of excellent films and television series through the years, but I frankly felt a little sorry for him having to appear in something this unremarkable. Hopefully it provided a sizable
paycheck.
Texas Chainsaw 3D is undeniably laughable some of the time, but it also has some very effective sequences. My hunch is franchise aficionados are going to be split down the middle (hmmm. . .how appropriate) on this release, with some liking (or at
least tolerating) this reboot and others hating it down to its bloody guts. Whatever your personal reaction, you may well want to check out this Blu-ray for the really stellar assemblage of supplementary material, including three very interesting
commentaries.
[CSW] -2.1- I rented the 2D version which didn't have any of the supplemental material. I have never added a title to my collection just for the supplementary material no matter how stellar. Although moderately interesting I didn't particularly like this
poorly thought out sequel to the original. There were a huge number of plot hole such as the fact that the main character was supposed to be a new born in 1974 when the first movie took place. She is in her early 20s in the rest of the movie, so it should
be the mid-90s yet they have smartphones with cameras that the cop could use during a phone call to show his boss what he was seeing. Also the Sherriff would rather have a family of murders live than a group of townspeople that took the law in their own
hands. So much so, that the sheriff lets Leatherface kill townspeople and then lets him go! And what ever happened to the mayor's son? Sorry but this film leaked like a sieve.
[V4.0-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box motion codes were available at the time of this rental although they are available now.
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