Written and directed by Kim Henkel. Starring Renee Zellweger, Matthew McConaughey, Tonie Perensky, Joe Stevens and Robert Jacks as “Leatherface”.
Plot: a group of teenagers crash their car on prom night and wind up in the clutches of the serial killing Sawyer family.
Now, this Chainsaw movie is one of our least favorites. Before I delve into why, let me tell you a little about the plot (if you can call it that). Four teenagers leave their prom after two of them get into a fight. They are just the dumbest teenagers ever, but one of them, Jenny (Zellweger), will be the “final girl”. Driving along, they end up taking a detour and they get into an accident with another vehicle, leaving that driver unconscious. So, while Jenny, and two friends go for help, the last friend, Sean, stays behind to watch over the passed out driver. Good plan? Of course not.
Jenny and her friends meet Darla (Perensky), an insurance agent, working in a little trailer that doesn’t look like it belongs where it is. She just happens to have a boyfriend, Vilmer (McConaughey), who is a tow truck driver. She calls him to help, but can they be trusted? Of course not. Vilmer is a crazy person and when he comes to the scene of the accident, he runs Sean over. Jenny and her friends get separated while walking back to the accident because it’s so dark out. Then, Leatherface (Jacks) shows up.
Popular opinion is that McConaughey acted in an over-the-top fashion, but if anything, we think that award went to Jacks. As Leatherface, he spent the entire movie screaming for, usually, no reason. We didn’t enjoy that at all. Besides that, another crazy family member, W.E. (Stevens), just quotes people the whole movie. It’s awful and quite distracting. We’re guessing that it was actually the directing that was over-the-top though, which is why so much of the acting seemed so exaggerated.
There was a well-placed boob shot. It was funny, both intentionally and unintentionally. It was also very interesting to see where McConaughey and Zellweger started their careers and the types of characters they started out portraying. But the rest of the film wasn’t really compelling at all. There were too many “what the fuck!?” moments. Like when they squeeze in the connection to the original movie out of nowhere. Or when the “illuminati” like group shows up to explain the family’s behavior in a completely unreasonable way. Or really the entire ending as a whole attempting to create some innovative rules that just made DJ laugh so hard he found it nauseating to even score the movie after it was over. Suffice it to say, it didn’t get many points from either of us.
My score: 28. DJ’s score: 24.
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