Movies That Suck/Franchises: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Texas Chainsaw 3-D (2013)

Despite my mixed feelings about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, I was hoping to see one more film in that continuity, mostly because of how much I enjoyed the character of Sheriff Hoyt and that incarnation of Leatherface. If nothing else, I hoped for something of a "midquel" that bridged the gap between The Beginning and the remake, telling the story of the hitchhiker the main group pick up in the latter. Like I said in my review of that film, I think it would've made for quite a horrific film to see what exactly happened to that poor girl. And, in fact, in either in late 2006 or early 2007, I thought there was going to be another one, as I saw a trailer on YouTube purportedly for The Legend of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with Marcus Nispel back as director... but it turned out to be a fan trailer, something I wasn't yet used to seeing on YouTube and which really irritated me. The final nail in that coffin came in January of 2007, when Brad Fuller and Andrew Form announced that they had no plans to make a third Chainsaw and that the series was finished as far as they were concerned. That was supremely disappointing to learn, and I still think it's a shame, especially given where the franchise has gone since then. For a while, the two Platinum Dunes movies seemed to mark the end of the road start for the series, which I was perfectly fine with, since I felt that its only major stumbling block was The Next Generation. I heard rumblings of another film over the years but didn't pay much attention to them, until 2012, when I knew for sure that one was coming. Not only did the horror podcast that I was listening to religiously at the time mention it but they also talked about how it was going to start right where the original 1974 film ended and would feature appearances by Gunnar Hansen, Marilyn Burns, and even Bill Moseley playing Drayton Sawyer. Interesting, but it didn't completely pique my interest and neither did the theatrical trailer, which made it look like a dime-a-dozen slasher flick. And the fact that it was being released in January didn't bode well either (though, from what I've read, they had originally intended to release it in October of 2012 but felt there was too much competition that month). .

I didn't see it in the theater and, even though it did well, at least from what I knew, the reviews I heard were far from inspiring. Then, a year after it was released, when I found the Blu-Ray cheap at McKay's... and still didn't see it right away, as the Blu-Ray player I had at the time would not play it, for whatever reason. I knew something was up, as it took an awfully long time for it to load and go to the main menu, but, when I tried to play it, it would go to black, stay there for far longer than it should, and then, just go back to the menu. Something like this has happened in the past, and just about every time, it's when I've tried to watch something that I ended up not liking, so maybe it's some kind of divine intervention. Regardless, I was able to watch Texas Chainsaw 3-D on my laptop's Blu-Ray player and, not only was the movie as bad and stupid as everyone had said it was, but the special features on that disc, which were very extensive, actually made it worse. The filmmakers not only admitted to some of the mistakes they made and said they just hoped nobody would hold it against them, but also said they felt that the ridiculous moral and character dilemmas they wrote into the plot were perfectly valid and they should be given credit for, if nothing else, swinging for the fences. The incompetence all around was just startling, and it also didn't help that the movie, overall, is a pretty generic horror flick, with the typical good-looking but unappealing leads who are nothing more than cannon fodder. What especially sucks is that the opening is really good, with an amazingly detailed recreation of the house from the original movie, and there are definitely some impressive makeup effects and fairly fun chase scenes, but on the whole, it's not only bad but maddeningly so.

August 19th, 1973. After Sally Hardesty escapes the Sawyers and alerts the authorities, Sheriff Hooper arrives at the house and demands that Drayton surrender Jedediah Sawyer, aka Leatherface. Though reluctant to hand over a member of the family, Drayton ultimately decides he has no choice. But before he can, a lynch mob, led by Burt Hartman, arrives and enacts vigilante justice on the Sawyers, leading to a shootout that kills nearly everybody in the house and the building itself being burned down. In the aftermath, one member of the mob, Gavin Miller, finds that one of the Sawyers, Loretta, escaped the fire with her baby girl. Gavin murders Loretta, takes the baby, and he and his wife, Arlene, raise her as her own. Decades later, in present day, the baby has grown into Heather Miller, and only learns that she's adopted when she receives a letter telling her that her grandmother, Verna Carson, has passed away in Newt, Texas. She has a nasty argument about it with her folks, who only tell her that she came from a bad family. Walking out on them, she decides to head down to Newt and claim her inheritance, accompanied by her boyfriend Ryan, her best friend Nikki, and Nikki's own boyfriend Kenny. En route, they stop at a gas station and Kenny ends up knocking over a hitchhiker. Said hitchhiker, Darryl, opts to forgive them in exchange for a ride. Arriving in Newt, they head to the edge of Verna's estate, where they're met by her attorney, Farnsworth, who gives Heather a letter from Verna and a set of keys to open up everything in the house. The group drives on to the house, discovering that it's a beautiful mansion. Opting to stay the night rather than heading on to their ultimate destination, New Orleans, they go into town to get some supplies, leaving Darryl behind to take their luggage in. But once he's by himself, he starts stealing everything he can find. In town, Heather meets both Carl, a deputy sheriff, and Hartman, who's now the mayor. Upon learning that she's a Sawyer and has inherited Verna's estate, Hartman becomes intent upon buying it off her, but she declines. Meanwhile, in his ransacking of the house, Darryl makes his way down to the basement, using the keys to open the door to a wine cellar, which also contains a metal sliding door, behind which lives Leatherface. After he murders Darryl, the others soon fall prey to him, and Heather eventually learns both her connection to him, as well as the town's dirty little secret.

Carl Mazzocone

After Platinum Dunes decided not to go further with their Texas Chainsaw Massacre films, Carl Mazzocone, who was then president of production at Twisted Pictures, the company behind the Saw films, met with Kim Henkel and Robert Kuhn to negotiate for a new movie that would be distributed by Lionsgate. Moreover, he offered to partner up with the two of them, as well as Tobe Hooper, allowing them more creative input and a bigger payday than they had with Platinum Dunes. Initially, this would've led to a movie directed by James Wan and written by Stephen Susco, the screenwriter behind both of the American theatrical films based on The Grudge, as well as Red, and who would go on to direct Unfriended: Dark Web. Their idea was a really wild one, with Leatherface and his family being from a Native American tribe that practiced cannibalism, Sally Hardesty being killed at the very beginning, and after a time-jump of 37 years, Leatherface breaking free from an abusive old couple forcing him to work at a slaughterhouse and going on a rampage. Moreover, their plan was for this to be the first of three movies, with Tobe Hooper himself directing the second and, possibly, Neil Marshall, the director of Dog Soldiers and The Descent, doing the third. Although Hooper and Henkel are said to have liked Wan and Susco's ideas, Lionsgate wanted some mandates (such as a PG-13 rating and no cannibalism) that made the latter two depart the film altogether. Some elements of Susco's screenplay did make it into the movie that was ultimately made, like its beginning right where the original ended, the Sawyers being lynched, and the time skip afterward, which led to him getting some credit. After that whole fiasco, Lionsgate partnered up with other production companies to make the film, with Mazzocone remaining on as producer, and Jason Goes to Hell-director Adam Marcus and Debra Sullivan writing the final screenplay, which Kirsten Elms would touch up further with the director.

The man they went with to direct the film was John Luessenhop, though nothing on his resume would suggest why. He'd only directed two films beforehand: 2000's Lockdown and 2010's Takers, the latter of which did feature an all-star cast consisting of Matt Dillon, Paul Walker, Idris Elba, Jay Hernandez, and Hayden Christensen, and also helped write a 2018 film called Speed Kills, which starred John Travolta. Honestly, there was very little about Luessenhop's direction that impressed me and, if Adam Marcus is to believed, apparently his and Kirsten Elms' rewrites and "polishing" of the screenplay made it even worse. And even though Texas Chainsaw was fairly successful (though not successful enough to lead to the franchise that Carl Mazzocone had hoped to make out of it), Luessenhop hasn't directed anything else since. In fact, the only thing on his filmography afterward is a producing credit on the next film in the series, Leatherface, probably because he and Mazzocone were developing a sequel to this that ultimately didn't get made.

For the most part, Heather (Alexandra Daddario) is a decent enough lead, albeit with a story we've seen told many times before. She discovers that, her whole life, her parents have been hiding the truth of who she really is, and when she learns of her recently-deceased grandmother, Verna Carson, and the inheritance waiting for her down in Texas, she decides to go there and collect it. Daddario does a pretty decent job of portraying Heather's need to know who she is and her anxiety about what she'll find when she and her friends arrive in the town of Newt, and when they get there, she's pleasantly surprised to learn that she has a large mansion waiting for her, a major step-up from the crappy home-life she had with her adopted parents. This compels her to go out to the nearby graveyard where her grandmother is buried and thank her for what she left for her. She even gets a chance to spend a night in the house, as her friends decide it's too good of a place to immediately leave. While she finds herself a bit put off by some of the townspeople, namely Deputy Carl and Mayor Burt Hartman, and they learn too late that the hitchhiker they picked up was a thief, Heather is fully ready to enjoy herself and discover her roots. But while exploring the house that night, she makes a grisly discovery upstairs: Verna's decomposing corpse. And she gets an even more horrific surprise when she runs downstairs into the kitchen and comes across Leatherface just as he's snipping the finger off a severed hand. Though he takes her down to his lair in the basement, she manages to escape, and attempts to get out with Ryan and Nikki. Ryan ends up dying and Heather has Leatherface chase her in an attempt to save Nikki. Carl happens to be on patrol at the carnival where the two end up and manages to ward Leatherface off, while Heather is taken to the police station. After revealing that she's a Sawyer to both Carl and Sheriff Hooper, and giving them a description of Leatherface, she's left alone in a room with a box full of information on Verna and the Sawyers. Looking through it, she not only learns of her family's bloody history but also about how Hartman and his lynch mob, which included her adopted parents, burned the house down and killed nearly everyone, including her own mother. And that's where my major issue with Heather starts.

Before we get to that, I have to mention the glaring continuity error of how, since she was a baby in 1973 and this film takes place in the year it was made, Heather, at the youngest, should be 38, but instead, they cast Alexandra Daddario, who was in her mid-20's at the time. That's the mistake that they freely admit they knew they made in the special features and just hoped that no one would bring up, which annoys me to no end. Personally, I don't think it really was a mistake, as there was no reason not to

cast someone of the appropriate age, other than they probably felt that teeny-bopper kids wouldn't want to watch a movie starring someone that old (not that a woman in her late 30's and 40's can't look good, but no one that age looks the way Daddario does here). But that's the least of my issues with Heather. After reading about the Sawyers and their being lynched by Hartman and his mob, she immediately empathizes with the Sawyers, writing the word "MURDERERS" across a photo of the mob celebrating what they did,

and never seems horrified at the knowledge that her family murdered and cannibalized scores of innocent people. Granted, she does confront Verna's lawyer, Farnsworth, about Leatherface and why he didn't warn her about him, but she, again, talks about how the town wiped out her family, instead of acknowledging what her family did to provoke them into doing so. And when she finds herself on the run from Hartman and his cronies, she begins to embrace her heritage, even acting all sinister and nutty towards Carl when he's picked her up (they try to hint at this at

the beginning, with her working in a grocery store, slicing meat, and her making artwork out of small bones, but it's very forced). But where things completely go off the rails is during the climax. First, they tie her up in the old slaughterhouse as bait for Leatherface, and when he comes fir her, he realizes she's his cousin when he sees a birthmark on her chest. Appealing to their bond, she confirms who she is and he lets her loose. Then, when Hartman and his lackey, Ollie, jump Leatherface, Heather almost runs away, but then decides to go back in and save her one

remaining family member... again, despite the fact that he murdered her friends just a few hours before and is also a sadistic man-child who wears other people's faces. She even gives him his chainsaw so he can take Hartman down, yelling that unforgettable line, "Do your thing, cuz!" (I read that Daddario didn't want to say that because she thought it was silly, but she was told that this movie was silly and went along with it). And finally, she takes Leatherface back to the house and, after reading the letter that Verna left for her, asking her to watch over Leatherface for the rest of his days, decides to do just that. Again, such horrendous writing, and that's not even the half of it.

Our other "protagonists," if you can even call them that, are about as generic and disposable as you can get, and are killed off very quickly. Heather's boyfriend, Ryan (Tremaine Neverson, aka Trey Songz), comes off as a decent enough guy and a supportive beau, except for when you learn he once cheated on her with Heather's friend, Nikki (Tania Raymonde). Granted, he says he was drunk at the time, but that doesn't change the fact that, when they're spending the night at the mansion, she gets

him in the barn so they can have sex and he goes along with it. Other than that, he's just there to be hunky, sweaty, and shirtless most of the time (I'll admit, though, that I find that tattoo of an entire paragraph on the left side of his chest interesting, as I can't say I've seen it anywhere else). And since he's played by a rapper, he falls into that trap of his performance leaving a lot to be desired for and you also know he was only cast to pull in his fanbase (which was apparently quite big, even though I'd never heard of him before). They even play one of his

own songs in the background of a scene. As for Nikki, I initially kind of liked her because she came off as a spunky free-spirit who knows how attractive she is but, in reality, she's a slut who wears skimpy clothes the whole time and hits on Ryan every chance she gets, not caring about how this would affect Heather. She does this even though Ryan recently hooked her up with an old high school friend of his, Kenny (Keram Malicki-Sanchez). Though she did seem fond of him, she still wants to get Ryan in the sack again (she's so thirsty that she may just want both of them at the same time). Kenny kind of comes off as a cool enough guy, and is apparently a great chef, but he gets killed before you really get to know him. And his death is one of the most gruesome this franchise has seen yet.

And then, there's the hitchhiker, Darryl (Shaun Sipos), who, instead of being either a member of the family or an escaped victim, is actually just a hitchhiker. Even though they meet him when Kenny accidentally bumps into him with the van while they're leaving a gas station, he seems affable enough, playfully saying that, instead of suing, he'll settle for some jerky and a ride to Shreveport, Louisiana (where the movie was shot). He doesn't say or do much during the trip, though he does act sympathetic towards Heather lamenting that she has to go claim an inheritance from a grandmother she never knew. But, after they see the mansion and decide to stay there overnight, the four of them make the very bone-headed decision to leave Darryl there by himself to take their bags in, even though they still don't know this guy from Adam. And sure enough, the minute they're off the property, he starts ransacking the house, stealing everything valuable he can find and using the set of keys that Farnsworth gave Heather to get into every last nook and cranny. That leads him down to the basement, where he's attacked and killed by Leatherface, who later butchers his body.

They try so very hard to make Burt Hartman (Paul Rae) a full-on villain, right from the opening, where he and his mob shoot up the Sawyer house, killing just about everybody inside, and then burn it to the ground. While he and the others do come across as far too eager to lynch someone, using what the Sawyers have done as an excuse to do so, it's kind of hard to see what they're doing as morally reprehensible considering who they're attacking. And even in the main story, where he's now the mayor of Newt, there are only three instances where I feel Hartman proves to be truly unlikable. One is when he insists that one of Sheriff Hooper's men, Officer Marvin, investigate the Carson estate by himself, and he comes off as really callous when the guy starts to feel uneasy when he goes deeper into the place and finds increasingly disturbing things, before he's eventually killed by Leatherface. Second is when Marvin accidentally shoots and kills Nikki when she bursts out of the freezer he finds and Hartman quickly says, "That's okay! It didn't happen!" Third, and most significantly, is how, once he knows that Leatherface is back, he decides that Heather is guilty simply because she's a Sawyer and starts pursuing her, going as far as to have his son, Deputy Carl, pick her up and take her to the old slaughterhouse in order to lure Leatherface there. Other than that, I can't help but agree with him over his outrage about what the Sawyers did and his describing Leatherface as a "sick fuck," as well as when Marvin uses his cellphone to show Hartman and Hooper the grisly details of Leatherface's lair, to which he says, "What kind of fuckin' human does that?" And again, while I don't agree with his methods and the way he treats Heather, and I would definitely call him an awful person at the end of the day, I can't blame him for his desire to hunt down Leatherface and completely wipe the Sawyers out. Like with the lynching at the beginning, I think he and his crony, Ollie, enjoy beating on Leatherface when he's completely defenseless a little too much, but that doesn't make me sympathize with him, either.

Given that he's played by the good-looking Scott Eastwood, and he manages to save Heather and ward off Leatherface when the first chase leads into the carnival, Deputy Carl initially seems like a trustworthy, even heroic character. In his first appearance, when he comes across Heather in town, he hits on her a little too hard, but after he rescues her, he comes off as very comforting towards her at the station, assuring her that they'll catch Leatherface. But during the third act, when Heather comes across Carl after escaping from Hartman and Ollie, and he picks her up, he turns out to be Hartman's son and has the same prejudice against her simply because she's a Sawyer (although, Heather's decision to act nutty and stick a knife-blade through one of the holes in the glass separating them in his squad car doesn't do much to quell that feeling). Under his father's orders, he takes her to the old slaughterhouse and ties her up, and what's especially crazy is that he never gets any comeuppance all his own. Hartman simply tells him to leave, citing what might happen to his reputation if he's caught there, and he's never seen again.

Ollie (Ritchie Montgomery), Hartman's lead crony, proves to be quite a rabid and bloodthirsty guy, as during the opening, he throws a Molotov cocktail into the Sawyers' house without any warning. And during the main storyline, he not only acts like a pervert when he first sees Heather and Nikki across the street from him, but also takes pleasure in slamming into Heather when Hartman is after her and bends down in front of her to mock her. This leads to him getting sliced across the face with a knife, and at the start of the climax in the slaughterhouse, he clearly has it out for Heather. He doesn't get to do much before she runs off, and instead takes as much pleasure in beating on Leatherface as Hartman does. However, Heather is the one who ultimately kills him, stabbing him with a pitchfork.

I have such mixed feelings about Sheriff Hooper (Thom Barry). As much as I'm not going to feel bad for the Sawyers just because they didn't get due process, I can't fault Hooper for wanting to do things by the law and arrest Leatherface, and I understand his frustration over what ultimately happens, especially when they were about to hand Leatherface over. And in the main story-line, where he's still the sheriff, he comes across as a far more reasonable authority figure than Hartman, but finds himself constantly overruled by him. When they realize that Leatherface is back, Hooper is, again, intent on taking him rather than allowing him to be lynched, and also tries to make Hartman back off from Heather, saying she's done nothing wrong, but like before, he can't do much to contain him. But where the mixed aspect comes is at the end, when Heather and Leatherface have turned the tables on Hartman and he's about to die, and Hooper does nothing to save him. And once he's dead, Hooper simply repeats what Hartman himself said that day: "Can't get around the good book," before telling Heather and Leatherface, "Clean this shit up," and letting them go. For me, that makes Hooper no better than the vigilantes he's been fighting against this whole time, and it would've been more effective if he'd taken both Hartman and Leatherface in, trying each of them for their crimes, or, at the very least, made a sincere effort to save Hartman.

Though he does try to assist Hooper in the opening, and seems as disgusted with Hartman and his posse's actions in the group picture as Hooper himself, in the main section of the movie, Officer Marvin (James MacDonald) comes off as an arrogant moron who, after the scene at the carnival, disobeys Hooper's orders to stay at the site of the kids' wrecked van and follows a blood trail leading from it to the Carson house. Hooper tells him to stand down but Marvin, eager for some action, decides to follow Hartman's orders and heads inside. He quickly gets more than he bargained for when he follows the blood trail down into the basement and sees the horrors within Leatherface's lair. He also accidentally shoots and kills Nikki when she bursts out of a freezer down there, and under Hooper's orders, quickly runs back out. But he doesn't get far before he's attacked by Leatherface, who kills him with a hatchet and later takes his face off to make into a mask.

We're never shown exactly how he escaped the house when it was burned down but, regardless, it's eventually revealed that Leatherface (Dan Yeager), or Jedediah, as his real name is in this continuity, has been living in Verna Carson's basement for many, many years, with her having looked after him and seen to his needs. And up until the main plot, he's managed to stay hidden without anyone knowing or dying. But when Heather and her friends arrive at the mansion, they unknowingly stir up his anger and rage, specifically Darryl, who makes his way down into the basement while robbing the place and is the first one to get killed. From there, Leatherface kills Kenny, butchering both his and Darryl's bodies down in his room, then chases after Heather, causes Ryan to get killed and later dismembers his body, and takes Nikki back to the house and stuffs her in the freezer. And after Officer Marvin wanders into the place and is killed, Leatherface prepares to take out the rest of those who were responsible for lynching his family. This ultimately leads him to the old slaughterhouse his family once worked at, where he finds Heather, but as he's about to kill her, he realizes who she is via a birthmark on her chest. With her insisting that she's his cousin, he cuts her loose, only to get ambushed by Hartman and Ollie, who manage to disarm him and rig it up to where he's slowly dragged towards a meat grinder. But then, through Heather's intervention, he not only avoids death but manages to kill Hartman and returns home with Heather.

If this were another film in the remake continuity, with that particular iteration of Leatherface, I could buy him doing what he does here. But this is meant to be the same mentally-stunted brute we saw in the original film, albeit forty years later, and thus, it's difficult to buy him as now suddenly so cunning and with as much agency over himself. Initially, he does act as the same wild, maniacal man-child who attacks and kills anybody he sees, especially sudden intruders in his house, and will relentlessly chase them until he

he catches them. And even though he's no longer acting as the cook and homemaker for his cannibal family, he's still butchering their bodies in his room and keeping them in storage, so he clearly hasn't lost his own taste for human meat. And given that Officer Martin finds a small room containing a lot of feminine things in the basement, it's suggested that he still has that transvestite side hinted at in the original. But after he's chased off from the carnival and kills Marvin, Leatherface suddenly prepares to exact

revenge on those who were behind his family's deaths back in 1973. In fact, he knows who they are purely by sight, as he has a newspaper clipping with a copy of the photograph of the mob taken after the house burned down in his room. He's even able to recognize them despite their now being forty years older (though, to be far, they don't look all that much different), scratching out each of their faces in the picture once they're dealt with. We also learn that, ever since Sally escaped him, he's become obsessed with not letting that happen again, and is determined

to track down Heather after she gets away. Thus, when he overhears on Marvin's police band that she's been taken to the slaughterhouse, he makes his way up there to finish the job. But where Leatherface's newfound intelligence and cognizance really comes through is how, according to Farnsworth, he knows that Heather exists and later realizes she's his cousin due to the birthmark on her chest. And, as Verna says in her letter to Heather, because she's the last remaining member of his family, he will protect her to the day he dies. Like I said, despite his being forty

years older, this doesn't feel like the classic Leatherface from the original movie, especially since we're bypassing the second and third movies and the evolution you could say he went through across them. Even if, as Farnsworth describes, his mental capacity is in line with that an eight-year old rather than a four- or five-year old, as it felt in the original, it's still hard to believe he would be this intelligent.

I'm also not that big on Leatherface's look in this film. Physically, he feels more like Michael Myers, as he's tall but fairly thin (Dan Yeager is well over six feet, making him the tallest person to ever play the role), rather than a big, very heavyset man. Granted, you could put that down to his being much older this time, but that also doesn't excuse how crappy the masks look. I really think these are among the worst in the series, mostly because, like the main mask in the 2003 movie, they look like they're made of latex rather than

very old, dried human flesh, and have that same overly Frankenstein monster quality to them. Also, something about the way they look make Leatherface come off as the Scarecrow to me! And while they said they went with the original concept of his having multiple masks depending on his function, I honestly couldn't tell the difference when he swapped one for another. I do, however, like the idea that he literally sews the masks into his own face, which Gunnar Hansen said was something he wished they'd thought

of when making the original. As for Leatherface's outfit, which he also changes during the movie, I'm just kind of "eh" on it. I do prefer the one he wears during the third act, with the orange shirt, red-and-white necktie, and brown pants, as opposed to the bright red shirt and butcher's apron he wears early on. But while I have qualms about the look and portrayal, I don't mind Yeager's actual performance. I don't think he's among the best but, unlike Andrew Bryniarski, he clearly had reverence for what came before, especially Hansen, whom he took inspiration from.

(Given how old Leatherface is supposed to be here, they could've easily had Hansen reprise the role, especially since he was involved with the movie anyway, but whatever.) And he not only gets the viciousness and brutality down (of course, you could argue about how spry Leatherface is for someone who has to be in his 60's, at least, by this point), and lets out some unnerving grunts, growls, and yells, but he took the idea that Leatherface got his leg cut open during the original's climax and made it to where he has an awkward, limping walk.

Even though he's only onscreen for a few seconds, the young version of Leatherface (Samuel McKinzie) we see during the opening is very impressive in terms of both look and performance. For one, his outfit and especially the recreation of the Pretty Lady mask from the original feel just about spot on, and McKinzie does manages to capture the large but frightened, childish, slinking away vibe that Hansen created. Among other things, it makes me wish that the whole movie had stayed in 1973 and centered around the house and family.

During that opening, you get to some other characters you haven't seen in a long time, chief among them being Drayton Sawyer. I thought the idea of Bill Moseley playing Drayton here was a neat idea, not only because of his own history with the franchise but, since he worked alongside and was friends with Jim Siedow, he might be the best one to interpret his mannerisms and tics. Granted, when I watch the movie, I just see Moseley doing his best impression of Siedow, but I can suspend my disbelief well enough. In any case, I do believe that, as abusive as he was towards Leatherface (who is apparently his son in this film rather than his brother) and the Hitchhiker in the original film, Drayton would be reluctant to give any member of his family up to the police, and I like that he only agrees to do so when he realizes he has no other choice. (Although, him telling Sheriff Hooper that he wants Leatherface to have a good lawyer is a bit much.) And even though, like in the original film, he just sits there and does virtually nothing, I also thought it was cool that they brought John Dugan back as Grandpa. They could've gotten anybody to be in that makeup and costume, or even just had it be a dummy, as I don't recall Grandpa even getting a close-up during his brief screentime here, but the idea that they went through the trouble of bringing Dugan back does show some reverence for the original.

One criticism that the movie often gets that I will throw it a bone over is how there are suddenly many more people in the house than Leatherface, Drayton, and Grandpa (not counting the Hitchhiker, who got run over). The thing is, before Sheriff Hooper arrives on the scene, you see a car pull up and a couple of people get out and run into the house. Yeah, it's only two people, and there are more when you cut to the inside, but I think that in and of itself shows that there are more factions of the Sawyer family who live in

the area besides just those living in the house, so I don't think it's that farfetched to believe that Drayton rallied the troops when he realized there was going to be trouble and that the others got there before that couple who pulled up. As for where the others' vehicles are, maybe they're in the back or they live close enough to where they could get there on foot. In any case, the most notable of these new Sawyers is Gunnar Hansen himself as one called Boss, who suggests to Drayton that they hand Leatherface over to Hooper, saying, "He's simple anyway." Not only is

there an interesting bit of irony in that it's Hansen calling his own character that, but Boss is shown sitting by the window in the same spot where Leatherface sat in the original after he killed Jerry. He also does the licking tic he did as Leatherface. The other notable Sawyer introduced here is Loretta (Dodie L. Brown), mostly because she comes off as the most benign of the bunch and is Heather's mother. 

Following the massacre and the house getting burned down, Loretta is found hiding with her baby in the spot where the family had been storing their victims' vehicles by Gavin Miller (David Born). He acts like he's trying to help and takes the baby in his arms, only to then kill Loretta and take the baby with him. When he meets back up with his wife, Arlene (Sue Rock), they adopt the baby as her own. However, when we catch up with Heather as an adult, her adopted parents come off as pretty shitty, especially Gavin, who's a

stereotypical abusive drunk. When Heather asks why they didn't tell her the truth, Gavin sneers, "Tell you what? Your mother has a defective uterus? She wanted a kid. End of story," while Arlene gets all defensive about her need to explore her past, acting as though she's saying they're not good enough for her, before adding, "Well, we're the ones that raised you, and you were damn lucky, I'd say." Gavin doesn't let her divulge the details of Heather's family, only saying, "You came from a shit-heap. There, now you know. If I had half a mind, I'd have left you there." That last statement prompts Heather to storm out and head for Newt, despite Arlene trying to warn her that it's the last place she wants to go. In a post-credits scene, the two of them show up at the mansion to try to make amends, though solely because Heather now has money to her name. But then, Leatherface comes charging out the door at them with his chainsaw.

One more Chainsaw alumnus featured in this film is Marilyn Burns as Verna Carson, Heather's recently-deceased grandmother. While we don't actually see her until a short flashback during the ending (unless you count Heather finding her dead body upstairs around the halfway point), Verna is a significant character in that she sets the main plot in motion, as she tracks Heather down and has the house and everything that comes with it prepared for her to inherit. In fact, Farnsworth tells Heather that Verna learned where she was not long after the Sawyers' lynching, but decided she was safer living with the Millers. Of course, she's also been taking care of Leatherface since he escaped the burning house, having him live in a room down in the basement and bringing him food and whatever else he needs. In a letter that she wrote for Heather, which she doesn't read until the end of the movie, Verna tells her about Leatherface, or Jedidiah: "Your only remaining blood relative. He is family-bound, and will protect you. He simply requires your care in return." She also tells her that her name is actually Edith Rose, and, "You are the last of my line of Sawyer. My blood runs through you. The decision to stay is yours. Just remember, you're a Sawyer, and this is home." During the ending montage, you see that Leatherface finally actually buries Verna in the nearby graveyard.

Aside from Sheriff Hooper, the only other person in Newt whom Heather can actually trust is Farnsworth (Richard Riehle), Verna's lawyer, whom she meets upon arriving in town. Telling her that Verna was a good woman, despite her reputation, and that her trust forbids Heather from selling the house to someone else, he also gives her the code to the gate leading onto the property and Verna's letter, imploring her to read it immediately. Of course, she doesn't, and after Leatherface has killed all of her friends, Heather meets back up with Farnsworth, who tells her that Verna introduced him to Leatherface not long before she died. He admits that the sight of him scared him to death, and adds that, because of what happened after Sally got away, Leatherface won't stop coming for Heather until she makes him understand who she is, and neither will Burt Hartman. Speaking of which, when Hartman storms into the bar, looking for Heather, Farnsworth tries to stop him but gets slammed face-first into the table for his trouble. He later sees that Carl has captured Heather and tells Hooper of this, leading the sheriff to the old slaughterhouse.

John Luessenhop's direction is, for the most part, nothing all that special or unique, but it is competent and technically proficient, and the cinematography by Anastas N. Michos is not bad, either. While it's not done in the grimy, 16mm style, the bright, orangey, hot look and feel of the opening still nicely captures the idea that this is taking place not long after the original film ended, matching the look of its final scene, with the sun coming over the horizon, and maintains that look throughout it. The image becomes especially orange when the house is set on fire, and

it's quite nice to look at. Once we get into modern day, that aesthetic goes away, but the movie's overall visual style is still an appealing one, with the bright, hot sunshine during the daytime scenes, the blue and green mixed in with the rain during the nighttime scene at the gas station, and the lovely, golden-brown look to the mansion's immediate interiors, which become dark and shadowy when we get down into the basement area where Leatherface lives. While the camerawork, as I said, never gets too showy, there is a moment when, while being chased by Leatherface,

Heather hides in an empty coffin in the graveyard and he, figuring out where she is, saws through its lid. The way it's shot in there does give you a feeling of her being totally trapped, with the saw-blade coming through the lid and right towards the camera. There are also some memorable instances of editing, including two montages of flashing images accompanied by that original camera noise: when the lynch mob are having their picture taken among the house's remains and the reveal of the gruesome

interiors of Leatherface's lair in the mansion after he takes Heather down there. Speaking of which, when Heather first comes upon Leatherface in the kitchen, just as he's snipping a fingertip off of a severed hand and it falls into a bowl, everything goes in slow motion for a few seconds, and when he turns to look at her, the shot of Heather's reaction is done by a zoom-in combined with a pull-back. When she then awakens down in his lair, there's a moment from her POV that's all blurry, with the sound muffled, as she 

sees him beginning to dismember Darryl. A very memorably edited sequence is when we see Heather look through the police files on the Sawyers while, at the same time, Officer Marvin investigates the Carson house. The former is conveyed mostly through extreme close-ups on, cuts to, and pans across various words and images within the files, while the latter sometimes takes a found footage route, as Sheriff Hooper and Burt Hartman see what Marvin is finding thanks to his cellphone's camera.

The 3-D gimmick was one of the stipulations that Lionsgate insisted upon that made James Wan and Stephen Susco drop out of the project, and yet, it's barely used in the final film. There are very long stretches where you could easily forget that this was in 3-D, and when they do come around, like the saw-blade heading towards the camera when Heather is in the coffin, when Leatherface is trying to get at her and Nikki in the wrecked van, or, most notably, when he flings the chainsaw at Carl at the carnival and it comes right at the camera, they're very short and quick, making me wonder how they even looked in the theater.

One aspect of the movie that I genuinely can't praise enough is the opening scene, which really makes you feel as though we're picking up just an hour or so after the original film ended. The location itself is what sells it, and what's especially amazing is that this is the first Chainsaw since the third movie to not actually be shot in Texas. This one was shot in Louisiana, and yet, the location they found, which was on a field that was part of the National Guard Base in Kathmandu, looks virtually to what we saw in the original. And the details they went into are just

spectacular, starting with the abandoned cattle truck on the country road, which Sheriff Hooper drives by, then the dirt driveway leading up to the house, which even has the swing in the yard that Pam sat on in the original, and finally, the house itself. Not only does the exterior look the same, with the added details of the cut-up front door and the smashed window that Sally jumped through, but when we see the inside, you could swear it was the same house they used for the original. When you watch the behind-the-scenes stuff, you see that they really were meticulous in their

reconstruction, with so many details like the bone furniture, the things hanging from the ceiling, like the chicken in the cage and the turtle shell, the raggedy window curtains, the sliding metal door with the red wall behind it decorated with animal skulls, and the kitchen, where we briefly see young Leatherface. They even went into detail with the rooms and spaces you don't see in the final movie, like the staircase behind the front door, the wallpaper, and the infamous dining room table, which had all of the same

decorations, right down to the chicken prop and the overhead light with a human face covering it. There's even a room off to the right of the staircase that I'm not sure was there in the original but, regardless, they put some macabre pieces of furniture in there too. It's all so good that it really makes you wish that, one, it was featured in a better movie, two, the whole film took place here and continued the story of the Sawyers, and three, that they didn't really burn it down during filming and keep it preserved as one of the greatest haunted house attractions there could ever be.

When we cut to the main storyline in present day, we first see the grocery store that Heather works at, then the apartment she shares with Ryan, which looks comfortable enough but is also clearly very low income, with some spots where the wallpaper is peeling; otherwise, they're decorated with the artwork Heather does in her spare time, and there's one room with a punching bag where Ryan works out. And while the home she shared with her adopted parents doesn't look too bad on both the outside and the inside, the nasty atmospheric that Gavin and Arlene

create makes it unbearable to be in, regardless. When we get to the town of Newt (actually Shreveport), which wasn't much of anything in the original, it's revealed to have become a fairly active little community, especially since the group has come when there's a carnival for Halloween in town. The setpiece that takes place at the latter is definitely one of the movie's highlights, as it has a House of Horrors (complete with somebody dressed up in the costume and pig mask from the original Saw terrorizing the

customers with a chainsaw), and various other rides and stands, including a Ferris Wheel where Heather is almost killed by Leatherface. Outside of the carnival, the only other noteworthy locations in Newt are the blue-tinted interiors of the police station, and the bar where Heather confronts Farnsworth about Leatherface. And the climax takes place at the long abandoned slaughterhouse where the Sawyers once worked, which is this big, expansive building filled with hooks and chains hanging from the ceiling, and a

meat-grinder in the floor in one spot where Hartman and Ollie try to send Leatherface, and where Hartman ultimately meets his fate. The place's exterior is kind of ominous as well, especially at night, and with the old railroad tracks leading up to it. Finally, as is often the case with these movies, even though this takes place in October, it was shot in the summer and it was very hot and humid (the closed ammo factory they used for the slaughterhouse was apparently extremely hot inside), and I think you can tell, which does add to the movie's atmosphere.

The most significant setting in the main story, though, is Verna Carson's mansion, which she leaves to Heather. An incredible house sitting at the end of a long driveway behind a big gate that requires a numeric code to open, the property initially looks like a rural paradise, especially on the inside, with a big elegant foyer, a beautiful dining room with lots of amazing silverware, a very nice sitting room with great furniture and a fireplace, and another room off from that with a pool table, settee by the window, and a record player. The upstairs area, which Heather

explores by herself while the others are downstairs partying, leads to Verna's old-fashioned bedroom, filled with her perfumes, a wardrobe with her clothes (among them are the clothes that Marilyn Burns wore as Sally in the original film), and her bed and chair next to it, which is where Heather finds her dead body. But that turns out to be the least of the house's macabre secrets. In the small kitchen area is a hidden door in the wall, housing a butler's pantry, and in there is a door leading down a flight of stairs to a wine cellar, in the back of which is a sliding metal

door that opens into a long, dark corridor that leads to Leatherface's room. And as you might expect, his lair is a gruesome place, akin to the Hewitt house basement in the Platinum Dunes movies, where he butchers people on a chopping block and hangs them on meat-hooks, as well as a space in the back where he keeps his various masks and a bulletin board on the wall filled with bizarre and horrific keepsakes, including the newspaper clipping he uses to mark off those responsible for lynching his family. Before you

reach that room, there's another space that Marvin finds that's filled with dresses, high-heel shoes, and even makeup, again suggesting that Leatherface's feminine side is still active. Also on the property is a large barn, where Ryan and Nikki sneak off to have sex behind Heather's back, and is also where Leatherface keeps a large cabinet housing some spare chainsaws (and neckties, too), and a small family graveyard. And when Heather and her friends are being chased, the long driveway that stretches through the woods and the automatic gate makes the place feel like a deathtrap.

Another compliment that I'll give the filmmakers is how, after the opening, anyway, they don't obnoxiously reference the original movie to the point where you wish you were watching it instead (though, this movie doesn't have to do that in order to make you want to watch something else). Now granted, it does open with a recap of the original's events, complete with clips and ending with Sally's escape, though I feel that just makes for a nice segue into the opening. Once we're past that, there are a few passing references here and there, like the kids driving past a

dead armadillo lying in the road, the sheriff's name being Hooper, and the reveal of Leatherface's lair being akin to the original's opening, with the flashing lights and the camera sound, as well as a more subtle one in that, like Kirk, Darryl dies by being bludgeoned to death, but again, they thankfully don't get egregious with it... save for Nikki being put into a freezer and later dying when she tries to escape. That was a bit much.

When it comes to the movie's story, I can also give them some credit for not just doing what we've seen time and again in this franchise, which was one of my issues with The Beginning. You do still have the same basic plot of a group of young adults on a road-trip falling prey to Leatherface, but everything else around it is very different and this is, notably, the first movie to feature Leatherface completely on his own, which I'm surprised wasn't an idea they went with sooner. But that's where my compliments for the writing end, as the movie not only suffers from the typical, thinly drawn characters who do stupid things that you often get in horror flicks, but has a moral issue at its center that I find baffling to say the least. It's not surprising, considering that one of the screenwriters was Adam Marcus, the director of Jason Goes to Hell, where Jason Voorhees becomes an evil spirit that body-hops from one human host to another and suddenly has this insane, Evil Dead-like mythology that he never had before, with Marcus himself nowadays going on about Jason being a Deadite. Marcus is a guy I desperately want to like, as he comes off as very passionate about this stuff and seems like he would be a fun person to have a conversation with, and I can appreciate that, when tackling these franchises, he doesn't want to do the same thing that's been done before. But what he doesn't seem to understand is that most people don't hate his ideas because they're different; it's because they're idiotic and completely fly in the face of what's already been established. Not to get off on a tangent but, while the "lore" of the Friday the 13th franchise was made up as it went along (which you could also say for many franchises), with Jason first supposedly drowning as a kid, then being alive (maybe) and living in the woods, and finally dying and being resurrected from the dead, to suddenly come in on the ninth movie and throw in all this previously unheard of backstory, most of it derived from a completely separate franchise, is way too much. And Marcus gets indignant whenever somebody accuses him of going too far with what he did with his movie, saying the previous movies had already jumped the shark, but I will argue that he sailed completely over it and up into the sky.

Getting back to Texas Chainsaw, I find what Marcus came up with here to be, arguably, even more insane than what he did with Friday the 13th, which is this idea that vigilante justice and a lynch mob are worse than a clan of depraved murderers who not only abduct, torture, and kill innocent people but also cannibalize and make furniture out of their remains. He himself even says as much in the behind-the-scenes features: "The Hartmans were so horrible, and what they did to this family is so inconceivably terrible... Um, look, this is a group of people who are

murderers. Absolutely. The Sawyers are bad folks. But, you know what? We live in America, and we live in a country where we're supposed to get due process, you're supposed to get your day in court, not a lynch mob. And, we were saying, 'You know what, these things happen. This stuff happens in our culture, where citizens take it upon themselves to just string 'em up and burn 'em down!' And so, for us, we were kind of saying the mob is worse than what Leatherface has done." I really cannot believe he said that with a straight face. Yes, vigilante justice is a

horrible, senseless thing, especially when we're dealing with somebody who might be potentially innocent, but we know that the Sawyers are not at all innocent, especially since the movie begins with clips from the original movie, showing what they did to Sally and her friends, with newly inserted shots of Bill Moseley as Drayton egging Grandpa on in clubbing Sally. Moreover, when Drayton is confronted by Sheriff Hooper, he's not remorseful at all and comes up with a lame excuse, saying, "He was

protecting the house, the family," and admonishes Leather face for letting "that bitch" get away. Even if they'd left a line you hear in the behind-the-scenes footage, where Drayton accuses the kids of trespassing (which, to be honest, some of them, especially Kirk, were), that still wouldn't excuse what they did. And the same goes for Leatherface's mental handicap and the idea that he is who he is because of the environment he was raised in; that doesn't absolve him from bludgeoning two people to death with a 

sledgehammer, putting a woman on a meat-hook and then stuffing her in a freezer, and chainsawing a guy in a wheelchair who has no chance of defending himself, not to mention all of the previous people he's killed and made skin masks out of. Thus, even if they were complying and about to send Leatherface out to be taken in when the mob arrived, I'm not going to feel particularly bad for the cannibalistic monsters being shot up and their house being burned to the ground.

This story could've worked, however, if there were more nuance to it. While the movie, as it is, does show that Burt Hartman really is a bad person with how he uses his authority as mayor to go over Hooper's head and his having it out for Heather simply because she's a Sawyer herself, despite not having done anything, and with the lynch mob coming off as bloodthirsty in general, rather than outraged over what happened, it should also not try to paint the Sawyers as total innocents. Rather, it should acknowledge that they're both terrible, and have

Heather be much more conflicted about learning she comes from such a horrific bunch, as well as who her last living relative is, along with what Hartman and his posse did to them. It could've also made for some insightful commentary about whether or not vigilante justice is the only way to deal with certain criminals, which is often discussed when talking about how the parents of Springwood murdered Freddy Krueger after he was let out due to the technicality. In fact, this conversation could've become all the more pointed by

having Hooper take Leatherface in and have him be tried (can you imagine Leatherface sitting in a courtroom?; he's no stranger to wearing nice clothes, but would they let him keep the mask on, and who would represent him?), only for him to be either deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial or found not guilty by reason of insanity, with the lynch mob then showing up at the house to take matters into their own hands. That way, you could make the argument that the townspeople felt they had no choice but to do

it themselves, since the justice system wasn't going to punish Leatherface and his clan for what they did. You could then also have the issue that, regardless of Leatherface's fate, by burning the house down, they destroyed plenty of evidence that would've had the rest of the family either sentenced to death or put away for life, be it in prison or a mental institution. I don't know if this would've made the movie that much better than it is now, but I doubt I and so many others would find the writing to be so frustrating and mind-boggling from a moral standpoint. (If nothing else, Marcus does admit that the disparity with Heather's age is a problem and was not his doing.)

Like The Beginning, Texas Chainsaw 3-D is among the more gruesome entries in the series, with plenty of gory makeup effects that are, again, the work of KNB. It starts early on, with the mob finding some grisly human remains amid the Sawyer house's burnt ruins, and then, a little over thirty minutes in, we get our first kill, with Leatherface bashing Darryl's skull in with a meat tenderizer. That and his attack on Kenny, where he hooks him in the back and drags him down the stairs, are already pretty violent, but we really get into the nasty stuff when Heather sees

Leatherface cut a finger off a severed hand down in the kitchen. After he takes her down into his lair, we see gruesome flashes of it, with blood splattered everywhere and a grisly look at Darryl's mangled body, with the face sliced off and an arm being severed by the saw. Leatherface then puts Kenny, who's still alive, on a meat-hook and slices him in half at the waist, which is among the most gruesome sights in this series yet. While Ryan's death, due to their van crashing, is pretty innocuous, and Nikki merely gets slightly sawed in her side, when Officer

Marvin investigates the Carson house, he follows a long blood trail through the front door and into the house, leading down into the basement. Upon getting down there, he finds more horrors in Leatherface's room, including Ryan's beheaded body lying on a table, with his head sitting in a small tub next to it, and we get another, gruesome look at Kenny's torso hanging from the hook; at the same time, while Heather is looking through the files on the Sawyers, she sees some grisly images of dead and burned

bodies. When Marvin himself gets it, he gets chopped to death with a hatchet to the back, and we later see Leatherface skin his face off. The final deaths are Burt Hartman and Ollie's at the slaughterhouse. Heather kills Ollie herself by stabbing him in the gut with a pitchfork, while Hartman gets the back of both of his feet sawed and, after both of his hands are sawed off, is ground to a bloody mess in the meat grinder.

Unfortunately, that last kill is augmented by some really bad CGI, especially when Hartman gets ground up. The good thing, though, is that there aren't many other examples of digital work in the film, with the most notable being some obvious CGI flames inside the house during the opening, and some possible enhancement for the overtly 3-D moments, like the chainsaw getting flung at the camera. One visual effect that I do really like, though, is the use of iris visuals on the clips from the original film during the prologue, which I think kind of help them blend in really well with the new footage.

As I've said, the movie opens strong, with a voiceover from Sally telling Sheriff Hooper what happened to her and her friends, before going into the recap of the original movie, with altered footage from it. My personal favorite is the close-up of Sally's eye, with Leatherface's image burned into it, before we see her escape. After we see her being taken away in the pickup truck, as Leatherface does his chainsaw dance in the middle of the road, it transitions into the new footage with the sound of police sirens, as Hooper

heads out to the Sawyer house, with Officer Marvin telling him that he's not far behind him. He passes by the abandoned cattle truck on the side of the road before reaching the driveway leading to the house, where he sees two people get out of a parked car and run through the door. Parking behind both it and Drayton's pickup truck, Hooper gets out of his car, wielding his shotgun, and orders Drayton to come out with Jedidiah/Leatherface. Following his brief confrontation with Drayton at the front door, Hooper

threatens to call in the state police if he doesn't comply. Though he initially stands his ground, when he hears the sound of more approaching sirens, Drayton decides to comply and goes in the back, admonishing Leatherface for letting Sally get away. Outside, Marvin arrives and Hooper tells him to stand down for the time being. But then, Burt Hartman and his posse arrive, armed to the teeth and out for blood. Hartman refuses to leave, despite Hooper saying he has the situation under control and that they're about to hand Leatherface over. In the midst of the ensuing

argument, Ollie lights a Molotov cocktail and throws it through the smashed window, and the others open fire. The Sawyers then fire back and a full on firefight breaks out, with another Molotov being tossed inside. In the house, various people are either shot or set on fire, with Hartman himself firing the shot that kills Drayton. In the chaos, Loretta Sawyer scrambles to escape with her baby, while everyone else, including Grandpa, is finished off. The lynch mob then cheers as the house is slowly engulfed in flames, while a shot of the metal door leading into the kitchen suggests that Leatherface has survived. Outside, Hooper can only watch as the house collapses to the ground and the sun sets.

In the aftermath, as they sift through the house's remains, one man finds the yellow chainsaw that Leatherface used in the original movie, while Gavin Miller finds Loretta over in the spot where the Sawyers stored their past victims' vehicles, suffering from being shot and holding her crying baby to her chest. She begs Gavin for help and he acts like he's going to, taking the baby into his arms, then kills her with a brutal kick to the face. After taking the baby back to his truck, where Arlene is waiting, Gavin runs

over to join the others in having their picture taken for the paper, which is a big, wide shot of them gathered around a pickup truck, with one man holding a severed leg he found among the rubble, while the one who found the chainsaw holds it above his head while standing on the truck's roof, as Hartman sits on the truck's open backside.

Following the time skip to present day, the next major scene doesn't happen until, unbeknownst to the others while they're in town, Darryl begins ransacking Verna Carson's house. Desperate to find what the biggest key among those that Farnsworth gave to Heather unlocks, he eventually finds his way into the kitchen and discovers the butler's pantry, as well as the door in there that leads down to the wine cellar. Opening up the large door at the bottom of the stairs with the big key, Darryl is initially disappointed when he finds

nothing that he considers valuable in there. Spying the metal, sliding door in the back of the room, and not finding it strange that a tray of half-eaten food and a half-full glass of milk sits at its foot, he tries every which way he can to open it. Unwilling to give up, despite breaking his knife in the crack of the door, he looks around for something else to try, settling on a screwdriver he finds in the room. But when he turns back around, Leatherface whacks him across the face with a meat tenderizer, knocking him to the floor, and

proceeds to brutally smash his head in. That night, as the kids are partying in the house, and Heather is exploring the upstairs, Kenny finds the butler's pantry while cooking in the kitchen. Walking in and finding the door leading to the wine cellar, he makes his way down there. Inside, he finds a big bloodstain on the floor, as well as Darryl's bag, and starts calling for him. Seeing that the sliding door in the back of the room is open, he walks inside, still calling for Darryl. At the head of the long, dark corridor beyond the door, he peers into the darkness in front of him, when

he hears something. Then, Leatherface comes charging at him with a big, steel hook. He runs back through the door and up the stairs, but stumbles right before he gets to the top. Leatherface then stabs him in the top of his back with the hook and pulls him back down the stairs, his screams going unheard because of the loud music playing in the main part of the house.

While Nikki gets Ryan out to the barn by claiming that she's found something horrific, when in reality, she just lured him out there so she can have sex with him, Heather finds her way into her grandmother's old bedroom. However, she's shocked to find her body slumped in a chair by her bed, when she's supposed to be buried out in the family graveyard. She runs out of the room and back downstairs, only to find herself seemingly alone in the house. Then, hearing something in the kitchen, she rushes in there, thinking

it's Kenny, only to stop dead when she sees Leatherface cutting up a severed hand. He turns and, upon seeing her, lunges for her. She tries to run, but he grabs her by the neck in the doorway and flings her back into the room, knocking the back of her head into the table. This is followed by flashes as he takes her down into his lair, and she awakens on the floor in there to see him saw off one of Darryl's arms. Putting his chainsaw aside, he walks over to her and kicks her with his foot when she acts as though she's going to

get up. He then picks up Kenny, puts him on a meat-hook, and when Kenny fights back by grabbing at and touching his mask, Leatherface retaliates by sawing him in half from the waist down. As he does, Heather takes the opportunity to run out of the room. She goes back down the hallway, up the stairs, and out the front door. Tumbling down the steps outside, she gets to her feet and runs across the yard, hearing the sound of the chainsaw approaching. She hides behind a tree near the cemetery, as Leatherface runs down into the yard, searching for her. Running and tripping over the

small fence around it, she crawls and hides behind a headstone. Leatherface approaches the graveyard and Heather, spying an empty coffin lying in a grave, climbs into it and shuts the lid. Walking among the graves, Leatherface switches his saw off, when Heather tries to stifle some frightened gasps in the coffin. Hearing her and figuring out what's going on, he cranks the saw back up and saws through the lid towards her, as she screams helplessly.

Hearing the commotion, Ryan and Nikki come running out of the barn. Seeing Leatherface in the graveyard but unable to get a good look at him, they yell at him. Turning and seeing them, he revs his saw and runs towards them. Realizing they made a big mistake, they rush back inside the barn, with Ryan closing and bolting the door. On the other side, Leatherface bangs against it, then starts sawing through it. Ryan and Nikki quickly run and grab anything to defend themselves, with Ryan grabbing a

shovel while Nikki grabs a shotgun in a pickup truck parked in there. As Leatherface gets close to sawing through the bolt, Nikki points and, exclaiming, "Welcome to Texas, motherfucker!", shoots through the door. The saw promptly stops, although they're not sure if she actually hit him. They then hear something coming, but it turns out to be Heather, who drives the van through the door. They quickly join her inside, with Ryan taking the wheel while the girls get in the back. Ryan backs the van out and, as he's

turning it around, Leatherface comes charging and just manages to get his saw's blade through the side door that's hanging open. Ryan floors it and drives back down the driveway, towards the gate. Unwilling to wait for it to open, Ryan tries to drive right through, only for the gate to slam them back and maintain itself. Ryan then has trouble getting the engine to turn back over, and when he does, he backs up a bit to wait for the gate to open. The engine suddenly dies, and as he tries to start it back up, Leatherface comes running down the driveway

towards them. Nikki panics at seeing him and Ryan desperately tries to start the van back up. Leatherface reaches them just as he turns the engine over again and zooms through the open gate, scraping against the gate's doors and swinging around once he's cleared it. They come to a stop, and Leatherface takes the opportunity to charge and slice their back, left tire. They pull away, causing him to lose his grip on the saw, which he drops to the ground, but as he watches, the van only gets a few feet down the road from him before it crashes on top of its roof.

In the wreck, Heather slowly regains consciousness, only to look over and see that Ryan was killed in the crash. Letting out an anguished scream, she then finds that Nikki is hurt but alive. She starts babbling in a panic, as Leatherface stomps down the road towards the van. Heather tries to make Nikki be quiet, when Leatherface smashes his saw through one of the windows, trying to get at them with it. He pulls it out and jams it through another window, with Nikki just barely managing to dodge it, although the side of her

leg does get sliced. He then goes around to the other side and jams the saw through another window, forcing them to move to the other side. He turns the saw off, then pushes the van onto its side, before grabbing his saw, opening one of the sliding doors, and revving up again. Heather crawls out, as he shoves his saw in and slices into Nikki's side. Before he can finish her off, Heather yells at him and he turns and chases her into the woods. At the end of the small patch of forest, she reaches a chain-link fence

separating it from the carnival and quickly climbs over it, tumbling over the other side just as he brings his saw down on its top. He begins sawing through the fence, as Heather runs past the House of Horrors, where a crowd is being chased by a performer in a pig mask who's also wielding a chainsaw. She runs off into the crowd, while Leatherface faces and sends the performer running off, before continuing to chase Heather. She yells for passersby to call the police, while the crowd begins to realize there's a real danger in their midst. Leatherface chases her to the Ferris

wheel, while Deputy Carl sees what's going on and pulls his gun. Finding herself trapped by the fence, Heather runs up to the rotating Ferris wheel and grabs onto one of the seats' underside. Leatherface cuts at the platform she climbed onto, then watches her and runs over to the other side, waiting for the wheel to bring her back down. Just when it starts to lower her within his grasp, Carl runs in with his gun and aims at Leatherface, yelling at him to drop the saw. Looking at Carl, he flings the saw at him, forcing him to duck, and runs off back through the woods. Carl then goes to help Heather, who drops down onto the platform.

At the police station, Hooper gets a call from Marvin, who arrives at the van's crash site. He finds no sign of anyone inside, and though Hooper orders him to stay there, he follows a blood trail he sees leading away from the site. Back at the station, while Heather waits for the sheriff in one room, Hooper is confronted by Mayor Hartman. In his office, he tells Hartman that he thinks it may be Jedediah Sawyer, when Marvin contacts him, saying he's at the Carson house and that the gate is busted open. Seeing that the blood trail leads through the gate, Marvin says he thinks he

needs to move on it. Though Hooper tells him to leave it alone, Hartman insists he investigate and Marvin, being cocky and saying, "A chainsaw don't make you bullet-proof," prepares to head onto the property. Armed with a light and a gun, he follows the trail through the mansion's front door, yelling, "Police!" Hartman calls him on his cellphone, telling him to use his camera so the two of them can see what's happening back at the station. At the same time that Heather is looking through the box of evidence on the Sawyers, Marvin enters the kitchen, finds the

grisly remains from Leatherface chopping up the hand, and then follows the trail into the butler's pantry. He hesitates when he sees the trail leading down the stairs into the wine cellar, but Hartman orders him to go on and he complies. As Heather goes through the grisly photographs taken at the scene, Marvin heads through the open door in the back of the wine cellar and down the dark corridor. Turning a corner, he's startled by a sudden sound to his left, but turns to see it was just a rat in another room. He

moves through a doorway which bones are hanging in the middle of, and finds the room filled with all sorts of feminine items, on which he comments, "What a fruitcake!" Meanwhile, Heather comes across a photo of Loretta Sawyer, and then looks up her file, which says that her baby was never found and is presumed dead, clinching it for her. Marvin continues on down the corridor and kicks open a door to his left, only to find himself in Leatherface's room. Horrified by what he finds in there, he films it for Hooper and Hartman,

the latter of whom notices a freezer against the wall. Marvin approaches it and opens the lid, when Nikki leaps out screaming. Instinctively, Marvin shoots her, killing her instantly, much to his horror. Hooper yells at Marvin to get out, when the signal fails. Marvin rushes out, while Hartman tells Hooper he intends to hunt Leatherface down and destroy the Carson place like he did the Sawyer house.

Marvin makes it back up to the butler's pantry, only for Leatherface to appear in front of him. He stabs him in his left shoulder with a hatchet, slams him against one set of shelves, and flings him face-first into another. Marvin collapses to his knees and Leatherface hatchets him to death in the back. Meanwhile, Heather learns that not only was Hartman involved in the massacre of the Sawyers but so were her adopted parents, prompting her to escape the station when Hartman comes looking for her. While Leatherface skins Marvin's face off, marking him as

dealt with on his photo of the lynch mob, and puts on and sews a new mask onto his face, Heather meets with Farnsworth at a bar. After learning who Leatherface is, she has to get out when she sees Hartman show up, grabbing a knife from their table for protection. Hartman smashes Farnsworth's face in when he tries to detain him, as Heather ducks out a rear exit. She runs out into the parking lot, when Ollie comes in and slams into her, bouncing her off his hood. He tells Hartman that he has her, but when he bends down at her, she slices him across the face with

her knife and gets up and runs. Hartman reaches Ollie and sees what Heather did, but figures she won't get far. Heather flags down Carl for help and he picks her up, but when he ignores her and drives past the bar, despite her telling him to stop there to help Farnsworth, Heather becomes frantic, demanding to be let out. Carl receives a call from Hartman, who's revealed to be his father and tells him to take her to the old slaughterhouse. Back at the Carson place, Leatherface pushes Marvin's police car into the barn,

when he hears Hartman trying to contact Marvin over the radio. Hearing him mention the slaughterhouse, he grabs himself a chainsaw, as well as a new necktie, and heads out. At the station, Hooper learns from Farnsworth what became of Heather. Tracking Carl's car, Hooper realizes where they're heading. Arriving at the slaughterhouse, Carl drags Heather inside, strings her up by her hands, and puts duct tape over her mouth. She manages to kick him in the legs, much to his annoyance, while outside, Leatherface makes

his way up the railroad tracks towards the building. Entering it, he comes in from behind Heather and walks toward her, signaling his presence by setting the saw blade atop her right shoulder. Outside, Hartman and Ollie arrive, the former telling Carl he'd best flee the scene.

Leatherface stands in front of Heather, revs up his chainsaw, and prepares to slice into her, when he looks into her open shirt and sees a telltale birthmark on her chest. This stops him, as he lowers the saw and touches the mark with his finger. He then rips the duct tape off her mouth and she frantically tells him that she's his cousin. Understanding, he saws through one of the ropes, but before he can get the other, Hartman comes up behind him and knocks him to the floor. He and Ollie start beating on him, then Ollie grabs Heather from behind, intent on getting revenge for her

cutting him. Leatherface grabs him and pulls him down to the floor, giving Heather the chance to run for it. Hartman and Ollie mercilessly whale on Leatherface, then grab and pull him across the floor towards the meat grinder, as he lets out pained, animalistic moans. Though she makes it outside, Heather, hearing what's happening, decides to run back in and help her cousin. Hartman has Ollie drag a long, metal chain from the other side of the grinder and wrap it around Leatherface's neck, intending for him to die a slow, painful death. He then sends Ollie

to start the machines up and Leatherface is slowly being pulled towards the grinder, while Hartman cruelly taunts him. Heather then kills Ollie at the grinder's controls, stabbing him with a pitchfork, while Hooper arrives outside. Heather stomps towards Hartman and challenges him. But when he approaches, she drops the pitchfork, picks up the chainsaw, and tosses it to Leatherface, telling him to do his thing (again, that line is just cringe). He grabs the saw, as Hartman comes at him with his pipe and

the two of them have an impromptu duel, with Leatherface managing to get the chain off of him and make Hartman drop the pipe. Seeing Heather is again wielding the pitchfork, Hartman grabs a crowbar and knocks her to the floor, saying she's dead. But then, Leatherface revs up his saw and, before he brings the crowbar down on Heather, Hartman turns around to deal with him. He swings at Leatherface several times but misses, with Leatherface blocking the bar with the saw at one point. When he swings again, Leatherface dodges and then saws into the back of his right foot. Hartman collapses and Leatherface promptly takes care of the other foot, leaving him totally helpless.

Hooper comes running in on a walkway across from them, pointing his gun. Hartman desperately yells at him to shoot Leatherface but Heather, at the same time, yells at him not to. Leatherface forces Hartman back against the floor, lunging his saw at his hands, until he slips down the edge of the pit leading to the meat grinder. He grabs onto the edge, continuing to yell at Hooper to kill Leatherface, while Heather, at the same time, yells at him not to. Hooper doesn't react at all, giving Leatherface the chance to slice off Hartman's hands, sending him sliding down towards

the meat grinder, where he's ground up into bloody chunks of pulp. Leatherface kicks his severed hands down into the grinder as well for good measure, as Hooper holsters his weapon and leaves, allowing Heather and Leatherface to return to the Carson home. There, in the kitchen, Heather wets a cloth and cleans away the blood around Leatherface's mouth from the beating he took. She then tries to touch his mask but he grabs her hand and pushes it away, before getting up and heading back down to his room

in the cellar. The movie ends with a montage of Heather reading Verna's letter, a flashback to Verna writing it, Leatherface finally burying her in the graveyard, him scratching Hartman's face off of the newspaper clipping in his room, and Heather assuming the burden and taking care of him. And after the credits is the scene where Gavin and Arlene show up to make amends with her now that she has money, only for them to meet Leatherface instead.

Normally, I do like John Frizzell's work as a composer, particularly his scores for Alien: Resurrection and Ghost Ship. But his music for Texas Chainsaw 3-D is definitely one of the series' most forgettable. It's that kind of score that I know I heard during the movie, but I'll be damned if I could hum any of it for you. I do remember the way he scored the lynching, the more emotional moments, and the final scene to be fairly good, and his music for the horror and chase scenes were fine too, but there was just nothing memorable about them. And there are a bunch of songs on the soundtrack, including, as I said, one by Trey Songz himself (I think it's 2 Reasons), but there are only two that stick out to me. One is Willa & The Buffalo Chips performing Jimmy Crack Corn, mainly because you hear it playing on a record while Leatherface is washing his hands of blood after slicing Marvin's face off, and the other is Closer To The Bone by Tom Leonard and Logan Mader, which plays over the first part of the ending credits. The latter is actually not a bad song, and it fits well with Leatherface's character, or this version of him, at least.

If Texas Chainsaw 3-D had been just another generic entry in this franchise, with dumb, underdeveloped leads but decent direction and cinematography, memorable location work, plenty of fun, gory makeup effects, and some good setpieces and chase scenes, all of which it does have, I would've been underwhelmed but would've also gone easier on it. But it ultimately makes way too many egregious mistakes, chief among them being its ridiculous argument that lynching and private justice is worse than depraved, sadistic backwoods cannibals who murder and devour innocent people. There could've been a less cut-and-dry, multi-layered argument about the subject, as well as a real moral dilemma facing our lead when she realizes where she comes from, but they don't go for it, making them come off as idiots. What makes this even worse is that the movie starts off really well, doing a great job of recreating the original house, but the potential is immediately wasted. On top of that, the way the filmmakers cast someone in their 20's as a character who should be in their late 30's or early 40's is just incompetent, I have mixed feelings on this version of Leatherface, both in his portrayal and his look, and the music score is rather forgettable. I know there are people out there who can overlook this movie's errors and enjoy it for what it is, which is something I can do for other horror films. But I can't do that here, and in the end, I think this is among the series' absolute worst.