TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D

After narrowly escaping the massacre of her friends by Leatherface and his family of cannibal killers, Sally Hardesty reported the events to the authorities. Sheriff Hooper then headed to the Sawyer farm to bring justice, but a furious mob of townspeople overpowered him and set the house on fire, killing the inhabitants and burning down the building. Only a newborn baby was saved and adopted by one of the vigilantes whose wife could not have children. About twenty years later, that newborn, Heather, receives an inheritance from a grandmother she didn't even know she had, the last surviving member of the Sawyer family still living in Texas. Heather discovers she was adopted and decides to go to Newt, Texas, to claim her grandmother Verna's inheritance. Accompanying her on the journey are three of her friends, a trip that will reveal to the girl the terrible secrets of her family! The family, the cross and delight of every society! It is precisely on the concept of family that the saga of "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" has been based from the beginning, showing how the fundamental and formative institution for every human being can be a tabernacle of horrors. All the rot of American society was symbolically contained in that family of honest workers, killers, and cannibals for fun, who defended their home and hearth with a hard fist. Ever since Tobe Hooper gave the collective imagination of viewers this shocking vision of rural America, a distorted mirror of every good formative teaching, horror cinema has never been the same. The masterpiece titled "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" is dated 1974, and since then, a lot of water has passed under the bridges, a real flood that has dragged with it sequels, remakes, prequels, and clones at will until the moment arrived, in 2013, for a singular operation: a sequel directly connected to Hooper's 1974 film that in one stroke cancels 30 years of the franchise and reconnects to the original, creating what we can define as an alternative timeline on the events of Leatherface and family. To be honest, it didn't take much to put order back into this saga, considering that the "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" of 2003 and its prequel stand on their own, and chapters 3 and 4 are more disguised remakes than real sequels. The only one that comes out with a black eye is the funny "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Part 2," directed with an ironic touch always by Hooper in 1986, which proposed itself as a sequel to the 1974 film and which is now swept away by the events of "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 3D." "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 3D" was born at the moment when the rights to the franchise owned by Platinum Dunes -- which had produced the pseudo-remake of 2003 and its prequel of 2006 -- expired and returned to the hands of Kim Henkel and Robert Kuhn. At this point, Carl Mazzocone, president of Twisted Pictures, already an orphan for a couple of years of the successful "Saw" saga, intuited the potential of Leatherface and family and did not think twice about bringing them back to the big screen. With the prospect of guaranteed box office returns, Mazzocone acquired the rights, leaving a fundamental productive role to Henkel and Kuhn with the idea of bringing everything back to the original story, and the choice paid off, as "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 3D" rakes in box office returns in the first weekend of programming in the United States and perhaps gives a new future to this saga. We can safely say that "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 3D" is a good film, not perfect, but a small miracle in the optics of this saga, which above all has always suffered from incredible repetitiveness due to official or unofficial restarts. The strength of this new chapter lies in its successful connection to the original film, which in the first minutes is replayed with the original footage and continued with scenes shot ad hoc that show us what happened immediately after Sally's escape from the Sawyer farm. A furious mob of Frankensteinian memory, a siege like in a Peckinpah western, a family of freaks ready to sell their skin dearly in a way very similar to the prologue of "The Devil's Rejects" and a purifying fire that should put an end to the entire affair, which we know is only another beginning. In short, a grand start, especially for those attached to the 1974 film, from which even the original Leatherface Gunnar Hansen (here in the role of a bearded redneck armed with a rifle) and John Dugan, who returns to play the role of the withered Grandpa Sawyer, are recovered. There's also Bill Moseley, who in "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Part 2" was the magnificent Chop-Top (Tin Head) and here takes on the role of the deceased Jim Siedow, namely Drayton, the clan leader. A treat for every true fan of Hooper's film, that's for sure. Then, after a time jump of about twenty years, the main story of this sequel begins, and we are introduced to the characters of this new adventure, who are the usual characters of any slasher: unpleasant young people and incredibly all beautiful. Minimal characterization if not entirely absent, with the exception of the protagonist, played by a beautiful and truly talented Alexandra Daddario ("White Noise"), who brings to life a Heather who, on the one hand, must replicate the tenacity of Jessica Biel in Nispel's remake, and on the other, builds a character unprecedented for the "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" saga, a controversial character who has a direct blood tie with Leatherface, being also a Sawyer. This becomes the focal point of "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 3D," the family ties that guide toward a precise destiny, that regulate morals and actions, proof that an individual's destiny is written in their genetic code. It's an unprecedented point of view on the entire affair, and despite some typical elements of the saga appearing immediately, such as the journey, the teenagers, the van, and the hitchhiker, in the second half the film takes a new and original path that makes this "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" one of the most "strange" chapters of the saga. Appreciable is this choice of the screenwriters Adam Marcus, Debra Sullivan, and Kirsten Elms, which denotes the will to truly renew the franchise and move the story forward without essentially anchoring it to the success of the films produced by Platinum Dunes. Then some carelessness appears that surely makes you raise your eyebrows, such as the ridiculous choice by the characters to leave the hitchhiker alone in the inherited house, with all the consequences that this entails, or the ill-fated choice of some of them to get into trouble as only in a horror movie can happen. Even the subplot that sees the romantic relationship between Ryan (Trey Songz) and the hot Nikki (a remarkable Tania Raymonde) is particularly useless and poorly managed because it leads to absolutely nothing. But let's say these are details that can be overlooked, considering that then the importance and attention fall on the successful new Leatherface (played by Dan Yeager), a monster who has aged and returns to collecting feminine objects and sewing masks directly on his face. The error that ultimately remains as the only and unforgivable one is the clumsy and inexplicable attempt to bring the story up to date. Throughout the film, it is always avoided to say in what year the story is set, but all attentive viewers know that the progenitor is set in 1974, so this sequel should be in the mid-1990s or a little more, and nothing denies this until an unnecessary detail that they should have avoided, namely when a character makes a smartphone the protagonist of a scene in a completely gratuitous manner, and then all chronological plausibility is lost, bringing a temporal shift to the timeline of the film and the saga. A problem that could have been easily avoided by not making that object appear and rethinking that incriminating scene. In the cast, in addition to the already mentioned, Scott Eastwood, son of the great Clint, and Marilyn Burns, Sally in the original film who here plays the role of the deceased Verna Sawyer, Heather's grandmother. The direction is by John Lussenhop, already director of the action film "Takers," who does a decent job of mixing a modern staging with some typical elements of 1980s horror cinema. The gore aspect is quite pushed with a couple of deaths that are really impressive. However, the 3D effect is disappointing, which only truly emerges in three moments when Leatherface's chainsaw comes against the viewer, then abandoning itself to a depth effect that is never such, given the almost total prevalence of dark scenes. For the more curious, I also point out a self-citation by Twisted Pictures, as in one scene -- the one at the amusement park -- a character appears with the pig mask from "Saw." In conclusion, "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 3D" is a good film that manages to add fuel to the fire, showing something new in the saga of Leatherface. There are some script errors here and there, and the 3D is useless, but for fans of Leatherface, this is a beautiful return to the origins. Don't leave the theater before all the credits have finished, there is a surprise at the end of the film. Add half a pumpkin.