Review of Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013) by Luciusmcgibbon — 17 May 2013

Okay, look. Did I go into this thing with high expectations? Absolutely not, which in the end is why I ended up sort of digging it. Was the acting bad? Yes. The characters cookie-cutter and shallow? For the most part, yes. The kill scenes tacked on? Oh quite. But I expected all that; if I hit play in the first place, at this point I'm still on board.

On a somewhat positive note, the overall gore level in the movie—while still in the high-splatter range—seems a bit toned down in this installment. Or maybe it's just that they finally stopped pushing the envelope... I can't put my finger on it, but it's almost like they were trying to be tasteful, an almost maverick endeavor for a Texas Chainsaw flick.

*******SPOILERS AHEAD*********.

The thing that scores this movie some points with me is the sympathetic angle on Leatherface. Not that it's executed any less ham-fistedly than the rest of the script, mind you, but the fact they even went there was an unexpected breath of fresh air. I feel as though viewers were teased with the misunderstood manchild idea so many times in the past, it was a truly smart move to finally explore it. So what if it couldn't carry an otherwise mediocre movie? The moral subplot comes through like a pie to the face, but it still does its job of villifying the mayor enough to make his gruesomely novel death scene more satisfying than cringe-worthy. ****END OF SPOILERS*****.

So for all its totally unsurprising shortcomings, TC3D isn't necessarily the waste of time you would figure it to be. I should say, though, that I watched this movie 2D, and I still feel like I got the full experience. The 3D thing was clearly not a directorial move.