This sixth part of the long running series sees Danny and his friends head to Hobb Springs when he discovers that he has inherited an old hotel from unknown relations. It doesn’t take long for the Hillicker (or is it Hiliker? I wish someone would settle on a correct spelling of the name) brothers to make an appearance. Someone’s going to regret this wrong turn and sadly, it’s most likely you…the viewer.
I still personally hold Joe Lynch responsible for the terrible shift in tone this series has taken since 2003’s glorious ‘does what it says on the box’ exercise in backwoods terror. Thankfully, new director Valeri Milev atones for Declan O’Brien’s last entry, (which was mean spirited and cheap) but he doesn’t quite get the series back on track.
In terms of ‘story’, I have no idea where in the timeline this movie takes place, I have no idea who is related to who or how (except for Sally and Jackson) and the whole thing defies logic in a way I’ve never witnessed before. The film’s synopsis sounded an awful lot like last year’s Texas Chainsaw 3D (and it is essentially the same story) but at least in that movie we were made to feel a small amount of sympathy for Leatherface. Nobody could ever feel sorry for these inbred mutants no matter how hard they tried. So for that reason, the main protagonist’s actions and therefore the climax fall flat. So, we’ve got a bad story. How’s the acting you ask? In a word – poor.
Why would you cast British actors and make them talk with American accents? The answer is because it’s cheaper. Roxanne Pallett was the only ‘name’ I recognised and she was hardly in it! The film is well photographed, has a good score by Claude Foisy and a couple of good deaths. Apart from that, whilst it’s an improvement over part 5, I now feel I can no longer support this series until the idiots producing them realise that some of their audience appreciate serious horror. If they want to go ahead and appeal to the blood and boobs brigade, they can do it without me.
OVERALL SUMMARY
It’s worth a watch for fans of the series and teenage boys but for me, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It’s not the worst or even the most offensive film I’ve ever seen – I’m just fatigued by it all now.
