Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D: Family Ties

Overlooking moral atrocities such as alcoholism, negligence and child abuse, one common myth that movies like to propagate is that of the inherent and unbreakable obligation to family ties.  "Blood is thicker than water," a burdened protagonist will say when facing the difficult decision between loyalty to or abandonment of a troubled family member.  

Were Charles Manson to have had a brother, I doubt that familial obligations would've been at the forefront of his mind when the police showed up to his house to let him know what dear old Chuck had been up to.  Nevertheless, "blood is thicker than water" is the subtext behind Texas Chainsaw 3D, the film that declares itself to be a direct sequel to Tobe Hooper's Texas Chain Saw Massacre despite the almost 40 year gap and inexplicable difference of opinion on how to spell "chainsaw."  

The aforementioned blood, in this case, is that of the Sawyers, the deranged family that took the lives of Sally Hardesty's friends in such brutal fashion back in 1974.  Touching on the highlights of the original massacre in hideous 3D, Texas Chainsaw 3D transitions immediately from Sally's escape to the arrival at the farm house of Sheriff Hooper (Thom Barry), who futilely attempts to turn away Burt Hartman (Paul Rae) and his lynch mob from enacting their own form of Texas justice on the Sawyers.  "It's on you, Burt" Sheriff Hooper threatens. "Can't get around the good book," Burt responds by cheekily citing Deuteronomy 19:19.  

Though all were seemingly gunned down and their house burnt to ashes, the Sawyer family has not been fully cauterized from the earth. A newborn is found in a hidden location and adopted by Gavin (David Born) and Arlene Miller (Sue Rock). Flash forward roughly 20 years later and Heather Miller (Alexandra Daddario) has quite a few questions for her adopted parents about the letter she receives leaving her the house of the late Grandma Verna (Marilyn Burns).  

Armed with an inciting incident and a curiosity to discover her blood roots, Heather is cancels her road trip to New Orleans and instead treks to the land where "the stars at night" etc., etc.  Along for the ride is the token black guy Ryan (Trey Songz), the best/promiscuous friend Nikki (Tania Raymonde), the disposable guy friend Kenny (Keram Malicki-Sanchez), and the kind-hearted hitchhiker (SPOILER ALERT: not really) Darryl (Shaun Sipos).  The motley crew encounters more than they bargained for at the backwoods Texas mansion, including a palpable hostility from the locals and a secret passageway behind the kitchen wall that leads to a locked metallic door in the basement.

The basement door contains not only the metaphorical past that the town would like to forget, but also, in theory, the price of admission.  The draw of any Texas Chainsaw movie has always been the silent killer who wears masks of his victim's faces and, for some reason, this time around the filmmakers must've taken a look at Friday the 13th Part III and said, "THIS is what will make our film stand out."  There's irony in shooting the film in 3D considering that the world upon which Leatherface is unleashed is so incredibly flat.  

The immediate victims, the aforementioned collections of bones and flesh mentioned earlier, all appear to be your run of the mill horror fodder until they open their mouths.  The half-assed ways these people hollowly act out painfully imitative dialogue gives the impression that Heather and her friends are not so much characters as they are robots created by semi-intelligent life forms whose only clue as to how human beings should act and feel was derived through watching B-movies.  Dropped into the middle of Texas, these robots fumble their way through a story that seems content both intellectually and viscerally to aim low.  

What makes this movie such a crime is the fact that on paper, the premise of Texas Chainsaw 3D has to the potential for intrigue.  The idea that our young protagonist is in many ways inheriting Leatherface also alludes to the questions of the inheritance and inherence of evil itself.  Buried somewhere beneath the brain dead screenplay from Adam Marcus, Debra Sullivan and Kristen Elms is also a debate over whether the crimes of the Sawyers are any worse than the townsfolk's Texas justice, but those questions are muted by a useless third dimension and a director who is anachronistically challenged—Heather Mills is either the youngest looking 40-year old this earth has ever seen, or someone just forgot to tell John Luessenhop that iPhones didn't exist back in the 1990s.  Additionally, how is chainsawing and eating people NOT WORSE THAN ANYTHING?

Texas Chainsaw 3D certainly isn't the worst horror film to have been dumped off in January—I'd much rather watch this again than last year's unforgivably lazy The Devil Inside—but being this far removed from Tobe Hooper's original classic and too close to Marcus Nispel's attempt at a reboot, this sequel just can't justify its own existence.  Aside from the use of what comes off as slapdash 3D, there's nothing that would immediately differentiate this entry into the series from any of the others; though considering the quality of some of the company it's keeping (The Next Generation, The Beginning), perhaps Texas Chainsaw 3D really is a worthy member of the family.