Texas Chainsaw (2013)

Before we begin: I’m usually hesitant to check out sequels, especially ones that occur years or decades after the original. I’d seen the reboot of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the prequel to the reboot, and though they were okay, I didn’t think they were as good as the original Tobe Hooper TCM. This 2013 flick was a direct sequel to that original Hooper film and was released in theaters as Texas Chainsaw 3D. Even though I saw the 2D version I remained skeptical, assuming there would be too many gratuitous, distracting shots just for the 3D release. Read on to see if my hesitation was justified…

The Film: The opening credits provide a quick recap of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre all the way up to the iconic escape by the lone survivor (um, spoilers I guess?) and the classic image of Leatherface waving his chainsaw around. The sequel opens immediately after, with the survivor recounting her horrific experience to local Texas police. After hearing about the tragedy, a local posse decides they’ve let the weird Sawyer clan go about their creepy ways for too long and decide to enact some vigilante justice by burning down the residence. The Sawyer family that inhabits that house of horrors has a brief and bloody shoot-out with the posse that doesn’t end well for the family. The scene recalls some of the imagery from Rob Zombie’s Devil’s Rejects and the scene even uses the ever-excellent Bill Moseley to portray one of the original TCM cast AND we see Gunnar Hansen (the original Leatherface) make a cameo in that showdown scene as well! As the house burns down, the posse rummages through the wreckage of the house to ensure there are no survivors; one of the group members, Gavin, comes across a surviving Sawyer family woman and her infant daughter. Gavin kills the mother and picks up the baby, bringing her to his wife who is excited to have and raise a baby of her own.

Cut to years later and the little girl, Heather, is working as a meat cutter at a grocery store and we’re quickly introduced to her boyfriend, Heather’s slutty girlfriend who has eyes on the boyfriend, and a couple of other friends who are planning a road trip to New Orleans – fun! As Heather is making travel plans she is contacted about the death of a grandmother in Texas she never knew existed and this also clues her in to being adopted. The grandmother has left her a sizable estate and Heather asks to detour the group’s trip so she can claim the inheritance. Along the way they also pick up a nice-looking, charming hitchhiker who asks for a lift to Louisiana. Then the group arrives at baller Texas mansion. So here’s where most people would be like “hey, I guess finding out I was adopted ain’t so bad, look at this awesome mansion I get as a prize!” Don’t worry, I was thinking the same thing and I knew what movie I was watching.

So the group looks over the house and finds that it is awesome. Heather gets a big bunch of keys to the place and they come across a mysterious locked door tucked away from everything else. They take a break from rummaging to go to town and stock up on some necessities. The nice-guy hitchhiker convinces them that he should stay back at the house because, charming smile. So that works and he immediately grabs the big set of keys to start ransacking the place. But he also knows there must be treasure hidden behind that super secret door so he heads there for his big payday. Well payday he shall receive because behind that door is the other survivor of the house burning/massacre from the original film: Jed Sawyer aka Leatherface. PAYDAY (i.e. bashed in the head)!

Meanwhile, in town, the rest of the group (well mainly Heather because she’s hot) catches the attention of the mayor and police, some of whom were part of the original house-burning posse and one of whom is just a young, good-looking, nice guy (because that worked out so well with the hitchhiker).

So the group comes back to the house, see that it’s been picked over by their hitchhiker buddy and decide he must have moved on. One of the guys goes to start dinner while Heather goes poking around the house again. The guy finds his way down to Leatherface’s bedroom and sees that the hitchhiker didn’t make it out after all. Meat hook, chainsaw, lots of cool blood and guts = Texas justice and one less “main group” member. Heather also stumbles on a corpse upstairs (grandma?) and runs out in a panic. This doesn’t go unnoticed by chainsaw man who then turns his attention to the young and bouncy. She makes her way to the family cemetery and tries hiding among the tombstones and even tries hiding in a fresh grave; clever, but not too clever for Leatherface, who begins sawing down towards her in a view that was clearly meant for the 3D release of this film.  Now remember when I referred to Heather’s friend as slutty and into Heather’s boyfriend? Well good for you for paying attention! Here’s where that becomes relevant: while Heather is being hunted in the graveyard and on the brink of being chainsaw-ed in the face, we see that the slutty friend has stripped down and cornered the boyfriend in the nearby barn, an offer he couldn’t refuse. So, post coitus I’m pretty sure, they hear the sound of screams and chainsaws so they come running out to help, distracting Jed and allowing Heather to make a break for it.

They non-killers that are still alive manage to make it to their van and they try to make a break for it. They go speeding up to the closed gate that helps keep out the riffraff and since there’s no time to stop and enter the gate code, Mr. cheating boyfriend/driver decides to crash the gate because that’s what everyone in TV and movies does. But the driver is black and this is Texas so I assume the gate is racist and therefore the van crashes into, but not through, the gate. Hahaha! Wasn’t expecting that. So now they have to get the gate open which gives Leatherface time to catch up just in time for them to drive off but also giving him a chance to slash through one of the tires. He isn’t letting these people drive off, he lived through that humiliation once dammit! So now the van flips and crashes, driver is now dead,  slutty friend unconscious and assumed dead, Heather, not dead, runs into the woods and comes across a county fair going on (oh yeah the fair was mentioned in passing earlier).  So a chainsaw-wielding dude strolls through the fair unnoticed… oh wait, no, the cops see it, call it in, and now they know that Jed survived the original fire. Somehow, not really important, Heather gets to the cops and Leatherface disappears back to the house.

Heather describes her ordeal to the cops, including the Sheriff and Mayor, who were at the family massacre years earlier, and they have a heated debate about how to proceed. The Mayor orders one of the cops to enter the house and track down and kill Jed, Hilarity ensues, including one of the more pleasantly surprising deaths in the movie (I won’t spoil it for you but I was pretty surprised!). So while the officer is checking out the house… by himself… like an idiot, Heather is left in an interview room while the Sheriff and Mayor are using Face-time to see what the lonely police officer is seeing inside the house. In the waiting room with Heather is an evidence box containing all of the information related to the incidents at the Sawyer house and what the posse and, more importantly her adoptive parents, did to Heather’s family. Heather sneaks out of the police station and runs into the young, good-looking cop from earlier. Remember how that didn’t work out so well before? Well it doesn’t work out well this time either. The cop ends up taking Heather to an old slaughter house to help bait Leatherface into showing up. Everyone (Sheriff, Mayor, pretty boy cop, Jed, and Heather) all converge on the slaughterhouse and the climax of the film is another showdown where they try to kill the killer. Lots of gruesome footage here and a neat ending that may surprise some.

All in all…

A much better sequel than I had anticipated, Texas Chainsaw was fun, had some great gory effects and even a few genuine, non-jump scare, surprises.

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