Well, what do you have here? One of Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zellweger’s earlier films. You like one of them at least, right? This is the last TCM before the big reboot. I will give a brief spoiler-filled synopsis, then give you my final thoughts and rating at the end.
SPOILERS
Kim Henkel was one of the original writers and decided to give directing a try, for the first and only time. I am sure he realizes that he made a mistake with this one. This is a fucking mess. In the typical TCM beginning, they refer to the past 2 films as “two minor, yet apparently related incidents”. Really, so just downplay the last 2 films? Well done! So it’s prom night and we meet Jenny (Renee), Barry, Heather, and Sean. Barry is the best part of this whole film, so enjoy his first 15 or so minutes. If you don’t laugh at him, then you probably find Amy Schumer to be the height of hilarity. Heather is driving and gets distracted and gets into a car accident and hurts the other driver. Sean stays with the driver while the other 3 go to this real estate agent’s office, Darla. I should note that Renee is actually attractive here and they did the whole hot chick is really an ugly girl thing that Hollywood never gets sick of doing. Also, Darla is attractive, but at some point, she shows her tits and you struggle to identify where the areola starts due to over tanning. It’s weird and I dwelled on this the rest of the film.
Darla calls Vilmer (McConaughey) as he drives a tow truck. Well, Vilmer kills the driver and Sean. Jenny gets separated from Heather and Barry who go to the farmhouse. Barry to W.E. Slaughter (Vilmer’s brother) and Heather gets caught by Leatherface who looks more like a woman than ever before. The fuck? Barry gets killed via Sledgehammer swung by Leatherface. Heather gets placed on a meathook because that’s a staple of these films. Another staple is the running upstairs and then downstairs and running upstairs and jumping out of windows. This isn’t a one-trick pony but like a 4 trick pony.
Jenny meets up with Vilmer, gets a ride with him, but he freaks her out so she gets out and the hunt is on. We see how the family is kinda run by Vilmer like everybody is afraid of him. He continually hits Darla, but then she gets some licks on him and they are very passionate towards each other. Vilmer also has a weird mechanism on his leg. There is like 30 minutes of filler with Darla getting pizza and cops and then this mysterious Rothman guy who has power over the family somehow. There’s a dinner table scene, as expected. Heather gets burned and killed and Jenny escapes and there’s an airplane and then she gets in a car with Rothman who brings her to a hospital while Leatherface dances in the road again. Yeah, you can understand why I did my best to glance over a bunch of that shit.
End Film
Final Thoughts – I still liked this more than part 2. Not by much, but McConaughey was on the verge of being a star, and he is charismatic as fuck here. Darla was a good addition, and Barry kept the beginning fresh and fun. With that being said, this was an absolutely confusing mess of a film. I didn’t get it. Was the Illuminati involved, as was hinted? Fuck, this was just all over the place. I am so sick of female empowerment in cases where they shouldn’t have any power and males are always useless or the bad guys. Horror is stupid.
Rating: 2.9 because it was better than part mainly because of Vilmer and Darla. Everything else brought me down. I wouldn’t watch this again.
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