It's taken nearly 40 years and seven slicey-dicey features for the minds behind the Texas Chainsaw franchise to decide a seismic shift was in order. But most longtime fans of lumbering, cross-dressing murderers fond of creative dismemberment will be flummoxed by the direction of this new chapter, which attempts to humanize a classic baddie no one wants humanized. Beginning with a recap of how the 1974 original went down, John Luessenhop's loosely bounded 3-D riff begins with Heather (Alexandra Daddario), an extremely attractive supermarket butcher (aren't they all?), discovering that her grandmother has left her a Texas estate. Roadtripping there with perma-shirtless boyfriend Ryan (singer Trey Songz) and friends Nikki (Tania Raymonde) and Kenny (Keram Malicki-Sánchez), she’s excited about the inheritance, but that's before good ol' skin-wearin' Leatherface (Dan Yeager) emerges from the wine cellar with his favorite gas-powered woodsman’s tool. You can probably already connect the dots as to the relationship between Heather and Leather, but the real crumminess comes in the cornball exposition. (Many of the kills are awesome.) Are we expected to care that one of the greatest slashers in American horror history is a grossly misunderstood family man with "the emotions of an 8-year-old"? Go to therapy and get back to buzzing pretty people in half, please.
