This direct sequel to the original begins as Sally Hardesty escapes the Sawyer house. We are then treated to post-converted flashbacks of all the deaths in TCM as a voiceover and some newspaper articles fill in what happened. Sherriff Hooper (wink wink) arrives at the house and tells Drayton Sawyer (now played by Bill Moseley) to give the boy up. In another nod to fans, Gunnar Hansen himself (now playing Boss Sawyer) exclaims that they should give the boy up as he is “simple” anyway. Before they can submit to the police, an angry mob comes roaring in and a shootout of the kind Rob Zombie himself would be proud of ensues. With the Sawyer’s (mostly) dead, the mob torches the house. Once the fire has died down, the hicks stay behind to clear the wreckage. One claims Leatherface’s chainsaw to hang above his bar and another finds a female still alive and promptly finishes her off with a boot to the skull and takes her new-born baby for his equally trashy wife.
We jump forward (one assumes) to the present day where we meet Heather Miller – a young girl who works in the meat packing section of her local market and makes artwork from animal bones in her spare time (What are the chances she’s the baby from the prologue?), her ‘good time girl’ friend Nikki, big black boyfriend Ryan and his crepe making friend Kenny who are all planning a road trip to New Orleans for Halloween.
When Heather receives a package telling her that her Grandmother has died she finds out that she was adopted (although I’m sceptical that there was ever any paperwork to support this – more like kidnapped)and has inherited a house in Newt, Texas. En route to New Orleans, the gang decides to make a detour to check out Heather’s estate picking up a hitchhiker along the way. Once they arrive at the house, Heather finds out too late about the town’s dirty little secret and by then her long lost cousin has been re-united with his chainsaw.
The film starts off pretty well but immediately disorients it’s viewers by apparently jumping to the present day, meaning the original massacre must have taken place in the 90s? I’m all for getting creative with your timeline (Final Destination 5 got it right) but why not be a little more ambiguous? Don’t have characters throwing around credit cards and using face time on their iPhones when your lead is about 20 years old and half an hour ago we were in the 70s. The character development is non-existent (with the exceptions of Heather and Leatherface), the slut is a slut, the black guy’s a player, the drifter’s dishonest etc. Alexandra Daddario’s Heather does go through an arc (a little too quickly for my liking) and Leatherface (or Jed Sawyer as he’s known here) is almost a modern-day Frankenstein as we are not only made to feel sorry for him but are rooting for him to kill people by the end.
The film does have some jump scares and a couple of proper in your face 3D gags but it didn’t need to be in 3D. There are a couple of moments when it works really well such as the scenes where the girls are trapped in their van but it’s hardly immersive – still, at least they actually shot it in 3D and didn’t do a shoddy post-conversion. Where it really succeeds is in the practical gore and the kills.
There are lots of references throughout for fans of the original and the series as a whole such as names, deaths and cameos and above all it’s an entertaining thrill-ride which looks good and doesn’t really outstay its welcome.
OVERALL SUMMARY
To try and give you some kind of rule of thumb to see if you’ll enjoy this film, I really enjoyed the 2003 remake and hated that films’ prequel. Looking at the series as a whole, despite this films flaws (and massive plot holes – some of which can be filled in using logic) this is much better than parts 2, 4 and 6 and I would welcome another entry into this always left of centre series.
