Netflix A-Z: Texas Chainsaw (2013)

Next up is the T selection! Man, the choices for this was huge.  Honestly,  I couldn’t quite decide what I wanted to watch.  My original selection in the rundown was between Tomorrowland and Two Night Stand but somehow, I just didn’t feel like watching either of those so I switched it up.  I guess what I wanted was something that was easy to watch and I have no idea why I went for Texas Chainsaw.  Don’t even ask me because I’ve only ever seen one Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie and that was the remake in 2003.  I would never had thought I’d start up a Texas Chainsaw anything after that one since that was so memorable in the way that I watched about 20 minutes of  the movie and hid under my coat covering my ears for the remaining portion and randomly peaking out into gory scenes on screen.  Sure was a great way to spend Halloween with friends, right?  That being said, watching more horror has desensitived me a little to it all, I guess so I feel confident about watching this.

Enough rambling! Let’s check it out!

 Texas Chainsaw (2013)

Director: John Luessenhop

Cast: Alexandra Daddario, Trey Songz, Scott Eastwood, Tania Raymonde, Keram Malicki-Sanchez, Shaun Sipos, Thom Barry, Paul Rae

A young woman travels to Texas to collect an inheritance; little does she know that an encounter with a chainsaw-wielding killer is part of the reward.- IMDB

Texas Chainsaw turns out to be in the horror thriller genre according to IMDB.  Not quite a surprise there for the horror part.  I’m not sure its a thriller though.  When Texas Chainsaw ended, I literally said to myself, “Wow, that was more dramatic than I expected it to be.” I don’t know the origin story to Leatherface. There was only one time before that I’ve seen anything of this and that was back in 2003 and I don’t think closing my ears, just hearing muffled sounds and peeking at the screen randomly counts as even seeing the movie.  My impression of the franchise is that its gory and violent and Leatherface is super scary. What Texas Chainsaw is is an origin story, giving a reason to why Leatherface does what he does.  I guess it makes him an anti-hero? But I mean, all the horror baddies like Michael Myers, Freddy, Jason kind of had back stories too that justified what they did, I guess it gives reason to why this movie is necessary if it wasn’t covered before (has it been covered?)  The thing is Leatherface suddenly seems justified in being the chainsaw-wielding giant (he’s 6 foot 5, so he’s giant to me) and even if it didn’t justify it, it seemed to try to make us sympathize for him.  But then, I guess what the deal is is that it didn’t all quite make a lot of sense, like the flow of the story.

The story here derives from Heather getting a call from a lawyer that she’s actually a Sawyer.  We know that because of the opening sequence portion but then it flashes to her adoptive parents that seem to give her nothing on the story and she just storms out. But still, she goes to follow the trail to get her inheritance which turns out to be a big house with tall gates and “Bitch” spray painted on one of the rock columns.  Inviting, right? But her and her friends still think its a great idea. And of course, she doesn’t follow instructions of what was left behind and in turn things get out of hand to what makes this movie.  I mean, the issue with this movie isn’t that its bad but rather that there are a lot of bad decisions, like illogical ones.  For example, why would you leave the stranger you picked up at a gas station in your new inherited house? Normally, wouldn’t at least one person stay behind? I do groceries by myself a lot and they needed four people to do a little bit of groceries. The plot had a lot of meaningless bits also that amounted to nothing either but it also gave us another side of the story (without giving away too much if you haven’t seen it and intend to).

Our cast here is actually rather familiar (to me at least).  For one, the main girl is Alexandra Daddario who I recently saw in San Andreas.  I’m guessing this is one of those starting roles in her career and for some odd reason they had to emphasize her awesome body and her big boobs for no odd reason like the scene above.  However, she was good with what her character was given.  Some times, in these roles, the main character isn’t particularly smart and she was okay. We can’t blame her for the script decisions.  Her character didn’t have much change and it didn’t make a whole lot of sense but I think she did alright for what she had.  There was Shaun Sipos who played the stranger they picked up called Darryl.  His role wasn’t huge but then I really like him quite a bit.  I just wish to see him in more significant roles.  But then, I haven’t seen Lost Dreams and apparently that’s supposed to be decent.  Moving on is another earlier role of Scott Eastwood.  I think this guy has some talent even if I only saw him in The Longest Ride.  He’s good looking and actually can interpret some good roles and in this one, his role was a nice addition.

Overall, 

Most of all, we have to talk about the main focus here: Leatherface.  I have to say that the character design at some angles weren’t great but then the story itself had its lacking moments as well and some parts didn’t make sense. However, there are some cringe-worthy moments and even some parts that did make me feel kind of tense.  Its still in the predictable slasher area but this scene up there, maybe wasn’t all the necessary, just like the open shirt side boob scene above, but I guess, it builds the character of what makes up Leatherface’s face. All in the name of the origin story building, right? 😉

Overall, it might sound like I’m trashing the movie.  Texas Chainsaw is by no means a slasher horror with a great story and it even enters the dramatic/suspenseful area to fulfill the thriller genre portion.  It gives us something like a twist and there’s an origin story that doesn’t completely make sense.  The characters and cast are decent.  I’m guessing I can’t be horrible about it because I haven’t seen the previous two (at all or much so I’m not a fan of the franchise either).  Something about a giant man wielding a chainsaw with a scary mask face makes me really agitated and tense so that alone made me a little nervous to watch it in certain parts but then, if it was in comparison to looking for gore like in the 2003 one (from what I remember), this one had next to none.  It all depends on what you expect.  To me, slashers (especially sequels) don’t always have stories that fully make sense and there’s a some bad decisions to be made and then some meaningless sexy moments and this movie had it all.  It was nothing new and there was like a scene or two of what looked like bad CGI so I’m indifferent to it.  That’s where I stand right now, maybe if I went back to watch the original and remake and come back, I might revisit it and do another review on it then. 😉

Have you seen Texas Chainsaw? What are your thoughts? Are you a fan of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise? Do you think I should go back and check out the movies before this?