Carrying cultural relativism out to an extreme, to the point where a sadistic clan of murderous cannibals with a flair for outsider art are at least morally equivalent to fundamental institutions of Western Civ, Texas Chainsaw 3D is a slasher film with more on its mind than innovative kills and clever pop culture references (though it has both.) That’s either a selling point, or fatal flaw, depending on how you take your horror.
In terms of the radical, subversive quality to a few of the ideas embedded in its story, and its ultimate capacity to flaunt genre conventions, Texas Chainsaw makes Cabin in the Woods look about as edgy and incendiary as Matt Damon’s new durrr fracking is bad movie (…will never forgive Cabin in the Woods for going with another fucking zombie story, then teasing that it could’ve been the first big budget Hellraiser movie.) There’s a pretty dark underlying message here, even by stories about a guy who wears maks made out of other people’s faces standards. It’ll be fascinating to see how audiences respond.
Movie takes some artistic license with temporal mechanics (the story posits it’s been about 20 years since the events of the original, when in fact it’s closer to 40.) This really seems to bother some online reviewers, so if strict, literal continuity in horror movies is your thing, you’ve been warned. I actually first saw the original Chainsaw films on video in the early 90′s, so it worked for me.
The 3D is cool at times, but not necessary, and really wish they would’ve expanded on the opening sequence. Otherwise, quite liked it. Want to see it again. And even if you hate horror films, there are far worse ways to spend 90 minutes than watching Alexandra Daddario run.
5 Responses to “Crossing the Rubicon, in 3D glasses”
I wouldn’t really say Cabin in the Woods was yet another zombie movie(they even said they weren’t zombies in the movie
) It was just a satire on the horror movie genre and was a pretty funny one too imo.
Nonetheless, I can’t wait to see this hopefully this weekend.
I agree with the above commentator. I didn’t hear anything about them saying that it was going to be the next Hellraiser either.
I’m a huge Joss Whedon fan, so Cabin in the Woods was pretty much what I expected from him. That being said, I love the TCM movies. Being from East Texas you wouldn’t believe how often I meet someone who claims to know a guard who knew the man at Huntsville’s penitentiary. Which has always given me a great opening to be the asshole who makes the person telling the tale out to be an asshole….
Also, not a huge fan of a high budget Hellraiser. That story was so amazing and penetrative into the darkness of the human heart, that miring it down under the weight of a budget is likely to focus too much on flying chains, puzzle effects, and cynobites- rather than the real horror of that movie: what is inside each and every one of us.
I wrote this sort-of review on a phone, while boozed, so forgive me for the miscommunications it contains…i LIKED Cabin in the Woods, how could you not? My complaint is they had all those monsters to pick from, one of which was clearly supposed to be Pinhead, and they went with zombies. The default cheap monsters of thousands of horror movies on the market, today. It’s just seems cruel to imagine what they could’ve done focusing on the Cenobite-esque character(s) with that kind of budget.
And no, you definitely don’t need a big budget to do a proper Hellraiser story, it just would’ve been the novelty of actually seeing it done. It’s a missed opportunity on par with Darren Aronofsky’s $50,000 Batman movie, which Warners will never make now that Batman’s a multi-billion dollar property.
Jacen – i remember hearing the same story about Huntsville, growing up outside San Antonio! Always wondered if they had some kind of copycat locked up there, at some point, or if everyone telling it really is just an asshole?
I always figured the whole Huntsville story came from the fact that Huntsville holds some of the worst of the worst on Death Row, and people may just be assuming that one of them was the basis for the story…my best guess is these people- if they weren’t assholes- knew someone who was a guard and had met Henry Lee Lucas who was housed at Ellis unit for quite sometime before he died there.