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Despite the fact that I'm a big horror lover, I'm so far behind with all of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre-movies, I won't even pretend that I'm a big fan of the series, or that I know everything about it. It's therefore also not like the series or the character Leatherface is sacred to me, even though I of course still love the 1974 original. So in other words; it's not like my love for the older movies is making me dislike this movie, or is something that I can hold against this movie. This movie doesn't even really feel like a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie in the first place, so I mostly viewed- and judged it as a standalone, modern, horror-flick.

And as a standalone, modern, horror-flick, it surely is a lacking one. There is so much wrong with this movie, I don't even know where to begin. Guess my biggest complaint is that it's just not being anything special. It has all of the familiar, sex-crazed, teenage characters in it and the plot follows all of the familiar, standard and predictable elements, involving an old abandoned house (or is it!?), in the middle of nowhere. They made absolutely no effort to create at least one single original or memorable moment.

It's a terribly ineffective movie, horror-wise. It has a horrible buildup, so all of the tension and mystery already falls incredibly flat. There are also no good, scares, no good kills, even no good gore. Sure, there is gore in this but somehow it's terribly ineffective. I think it's due to it that the movie tries too hard to shock, without really incorporating it properly into the movie. You need to have some type of buildup- or you at least have to care somewhat for some of the characters, in oder to make your gore effective as well.

The movie has a constant dark atmosphere but still yet not really a good horror atmosphere. It's just dark for the sake of being dark but it's not there to help to ever create any tension or mystery for the movie.

Next to being formulaic and predictable, the story also has plenty of other problems to it. It's an incredibly lazy script, in which stuff just doesn't even really make any sense. They made no effort to create any sort of depth and it basically also is a very shallow movie, without any emotions. Nothing really gets explained either and the movie relies heavily on its audience to just sort of go along with things. But the more you start to think about it, the less sense everything suddenly starts to make, especially after its final 10 minutes or so.

I was actually ready to call this movie not any better or worse than some of the other recent genre attempts that I have seen but the final 10 minutes ruined this and made this movie even more horrible than most of the other modern slashers. Even the most horrible looking low-budget ones! It's the sort of ending in which the movie suddenly feels the need to have a twist and it doesn't matter to the film-makers if it fits in with the rest of the movie or not. It basically says; everything you've seen in the first 80 minutes was wrong and this is what the story was truly about. In other words, the first 80 minutes of this movie were utterly pointless and just doesn't go along with the final 10 minutes at all. Maybe, just maybe, I could had still forgiven the movie for this if the twist indeed was a good or effective one but it really isn't though. It just doesn't make any logical sense and again; it's all some very lazy writing, in which it lets stuff just happen, without building up toward anything. Next to being ineffective, it's also terribly insulting toward its audience, in my opinion.

We'll probably get far more sequels after the success of this movie. Lets just hope they put some more creativity and effort into it next time and please hire a director and writer that actually know how to do horror/slasher stuff!

3/10

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About Frank Veenstra

Watches movies...writes about them...and that's it for now.
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