The horror genre’s been through a number of ups and downs throughout the years, and while it hasn’t always been popular, it’s thankfully never disappeared completely.
In the new millennium, horror was having a hell of a resurrection, but sadly, the movies had never been worse.
In fact, it was a year ago that one of the worst horror films in memory hit theaters, The Devil Inside, but despite the fact that the movie was horrible, it still made a ton of dough. And now a year later, the latest Texas Chainsaw film, which is in 3D, is #1 at the box office, finally beating out The Hobbit, and keeping Django Unchained on the second rung of the ladder.
Although I still believe the whole Texas Chainsaw series should stop, because you can never beat the original in a million years, the new 3D version got fair reviews for what it is, and again, it goes to show that fans haven’t lost their taste for cinematic bloodshed. (The new Evil Dead trailer, which is pretty nasty stuff, has also been getting a lot of attention all over internet as well).
As the film’s review on Vulture tells us, the movie begins with footage from the original film, which is now in 3D, and it would be interesting to see how it looks in three dimensions. Vulture wasn’t that impressed with the new Chainsaw (or the original for that matter), but they did like the last thirty minutes of the movie, which was “a bit more interesting and unpredictable than the usual horror-movie third act…you can sense the gears turning in the screenwriters’s heads as they try to figure out a way to breathe some fresh life into this franchise. It’s to their credit that they almost succeed.”
My friend Matt Lohr also posted some interesting thoughts about TCM 3D on his Facebook page, beginning with, “Is it possible to say you enjoyed a horror film that failed to scare you even once? The first hour leaves no genre cliché unturned,” and the shock scarepieces in the film are set up “with a fair degree of indifference, but the last 30 minutes takes some narrative gambles that, if nothing else, set us up for some potentially interesting sequels.”
Wait, more Chainsaw sequels? You mean there’s going to be even more? Doesn’t anyone want to see an original horror movie anymore? Cabin in the Woods was fun, how about getting that on DVD or Blu-Ray and checking it out? Well, however many more Texas Chainsaws we have coming, at least it’s good to know the horror genre is still alive and well, and the fans are still shelling out their hard earned bucks to be scared.
