The first warning sign here is fitting this movie into the others like a bit of a jigsaw puzzle. The credits do a pretty slick recap of the events of the first movie, but then it clunks into a really long sequence set between 1 and 2. Another is the complicated name. Texas Chainsaw. Is it 3D at the end? There's no "Massacre", so it's technically different than the 1970s and 2000s one, but it still feels necessary to throw a (2014) in there. The movie would have worked just as well without the prologue. When Heather (Alexandra Daddario) finds out all the sordid history in the police station, it's double the exposition on the crap we already saw in the flashback!
The cast of doomed teens does a pretty good job with their characters before the soaked-in-blood part of the movie ramps up. And once that inevitably rolls around, the action is mostly pretty quick and brutal, reminding of the best parts of the original. The 3D really starts to grate around the time Heather has a first big chase with Leatherface. She ends up in a coffin with the chainsaw coming down at her face, then escapes from that only to get a chainsaw thrown at her and our heads. Daddario does a great job with all of her scream queen glory in the first hour or so of the movie.
There are a couple of cool, somewhat-clever set pieces. Leatherface stalks a couple people in an overturned van in a way that brought to mind Scream and Jurassic Park. Later, a police officer searches a dark and scary house holding a gun and his phone as a flashlight, while giving the sheriff and mayor a live look via FaceTime. This one sounds obnoxious on paper, but it works pretty well in the movie even though the officer in question is the definition of a throwaway character. The more interesting / revealing part is the sheriff/mayor's reactions, playing on their 20-year, 1 and a half movie long relationship.
Mild spoilers follow. I'm warning even though the plot developments are fairly blindingly obvious and I'm not sure many people clamoring for the latest turn of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre haven't seen it yet. But the ending parts of the movie put the viewer in a precarious situation. It flat out paints Leatherface as the good guy, as just misunderstood and needing help. The movie goes out of its way to make a villain so reprehensible that we cheer for him to be slowly dragged into a meat grinder. There's a moment of exhaling, relaxing at the trail of dead bodies being over, but there are still a lot of dead people. Horror movies are supposed to be bleak, and there are certainly great endings where no one wins. But this one comes off more as a triumphant action movie villain death than something deeper or darker. Leatherface is only missing a one-liner.
Is Heather still the hero and a good person after it all? Did we watch her transform into a monster in response to a monster? Was that monster the evil sheriff or her cousin that turned her boyfriend and best friend into meat? The movie's over too quickly to really think through any of this before the credits roll and blast you with the loudest song from the soundtrack.
No comments:
Post a Comment