Texas Chainsaw 3D

Director: John Lussenhop (2013)

Starring: Alexandra Daddario, Dan Yeager, Trey Songz

Find it: IMDB

There's a buzz in the air. Can you hear it? Leatherface returns in Texas Chainsaw 3D, a direct sequel to what might be my favourite horror movie of all time. Texas Chainsaw 3D disposes of half of the title, three sequels and a remake (plus that film's prequel) to return to Texas, 1974. Sally Hardesty has just escaped the Sawyer homestead. Leatherface is swinging his chainsaw about, incensed by his own uselessness. And then a mob of furious locals descends upon the Sawyer family home...

Years later, Heather (Daddario) learns that she was adopted, and that her estranged grandmother has left a doozy of an inheritance in her will. Heather is now the proud owner of a massive country house. Should have read the small print though: she's also inherited her inbred cannibalistic cousin, Leatherface, who lives in the basement, probably playing World of Warcraft. It's like the plot of Castle Freak, except with Leatherface and his chainsaw instead of The Freak and its chode.

Leatherface makes his presence known during Heather's housewarming party, immediately setting about his new house guests with his massive chainsaw. Old habits die hard, eh. The first half of Texas Chainsaw 3D is rote and predictable, enlivened by a brief cameo from Bill Moseley and Leatherface's impressive physicality - he's pretty spry for an old guy; meaner and stronger than he's ever been. There are some nice little touches to the film for old fans - I particularly liked the re-appearance of his garish tie from the first flick.

The second half of the film fares better, moving the action from the old Sawyer house to the surrounding town. There an old town conspiracy is uncovered, the Mayor wears a Stetson and cuddly cult favourite Richard Riehle (okay, my cuddly cult favourite) plays a lawyer. There's a nifty sequence set at the town carnival (where Leatherface actually bumps into the Pig man from Saw) and a fairly tense bit in which a cop stalks our psychopath in the basement of his home. That he records his man-on-a-mission with FaceTime (face time, geddit) spoils the atmosphere slightly, but there's a good pay-off.  

Now we all love Leatherface (a good title for a sitcom, that) but there was no need to turn him into some sort of sympathetic antihero type. Yet that's what Texas Chainsaw 3D tries to do. It would be plausible to have the town sheriff sympathise with Leatherface if the killer hadn't just spent the last 80 minutes trying to murder everyone he could lay his chubby hands on. The finale veers from inspired to stupid, with characters making ridiculous decisions and the film descending into some sort of Revenge Horror with Leatherface playing the wronged party. I doubt poor Sally Hardesty would see it that way.

Texas Chainsaw 3D is an enjoyable disappointment. There are some decent horror and action sequences, but ultimately the film is very flawed. The characters are unsympathetic and stupid, the script silly and devoid of any humour. Worst of all, this film discards the canon of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, rendering Dennis Hopper and Chop-Top non-existent. Unforgivable. But at least that means Matthew McConaughey never existed either. Every cloud, and all that.  

Ultimately, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has one of the greatest sequels of all time. It's called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. You would do well to seek it out, no matter what the dodgy canon of Texas Chainsaw 3D tells you to do.

Dredd

Director: Pete Travis (2012)
Starring: Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Lena Heady
Find it: IMDB

Following the colourful, cartoonish mid-nineties Sylvester Stallone adaptation, Judge Dredd has gone all urban. Karl Urban, geddit. But also, grimmer, grittier and very dirty. It's a more realistic Mega City One than we've seen before, perhaps thanks to the film's relatively low budget. Glimpses of the future we recognise from the pages of 2000ad are there all right, but they're buried amongst battered vehicles and dirty architecture of our time - an uncomfortable mesh of the old and the new. All that stands between Mega City One and total chaos is the Judges - an elite force with the power to dispense instant justice. If Dredd is anything to go by, they massively favour the death sentence.

Very best of the Judges is Joe Dredd (Urban) - a jobsworth fascist who makes Dirty Harry look positively sparkling clean by comparison. Dredd has captured the essence of Dredd beautifully; he speaks in monotone, never once smiles and certainly doesn't take off his helmet. The uniform is very different (although it did put me in mind of Dredd's earlier appearances in 2000ad) and the helmet looks a bit too big, but this is Judge Dredd as I'd always imagined seeing him on the big screen. Urban thankfully resists the urge to go Full Christian Bale with the voice, which is gravelly but restrained.

In a plot which is like Training Day meets Die Hard, Dredd takes rookie Judge Anderson (Thirlby) on a routine training mission in the Big Meg. There, they are called to investigate a multiple homicide at Peach Trees block. At Peach Trees, they run afoul of gang lord (gang lady?) Ma-Ma Madrigal (Headey), Avon Barksdale from off've The Wire and a whole lot of heavily armed perps. Yes, it's like The Raid, except with Judge Dredd.

That growing feeling of intense disappointment I had while watching The Dark Knight Rises? Dredd was the complete opposite of that. I loved every single moment of it. Even the 3D, and I despise watching movies in 3D. It actually works very well in Dredd (I'm still not calling it Dredd 3D) particularly during the drug-induced Slow-Mo scenes. The action is intense, violent and incredibly gory. Heady's Ma-Ma is quietly menacing, Thirlby is adorably sympathetic as Anderson and Urban is an admirably terse Dredd.

There are, of course, criticisms. I'm a big Dredd fanboy, so some changes to the source material hurt more than others. The costume makes sense, but I'm not sure about the use of our modern vehicles on Mega City's roads. The action being largely set in Peach Trees makes for an incredibly tense movie, but I would also have liked to see more of the Big Meg. My biggest problem however, is with the language. I love fucking swearing as much as the next twat, but in Dredd, I thought it excessive. Dredd comics, see, come with their own profanisaurus, and I would have much preferred to see the characters shouting things like 'Drokk' and 'Grud' rather than boring old 'fuck' and 'shit'. It makes it seem grittier, but a 'Stomm' or two wouldn't have hurt. Likewise, it could maybe have used a little more humour and satire amongst all the bloodshed.

Dredd is a fantastic, mostly faithful adaptation of a series that really deserves the exposure. Despite some stiff competition, Dredd might be my favourite comic book adaptation of the year. Grud, it's good. 

Piranha 3DD

Director: John Gulager (2012)

Starring: Danielle Panabaker, Matt Bush, David Koechner, David Hasselhoff

Find it: IMDB 

Geddit, boobs. Alexandrea Aja's Piranha remake seemed to come out of nowhere and instantly became one of my favourite movies of 2010. Given its success, a sequel was inevitable. That sequel comes in the form of Piranha 3DD. The title is a good indicator of the film's level of maturity. Haha, boobies.

It's more of a broad comedy than its slick, gory predecessor. With Alexandre Aja not returning, Feast director John Gulager takes over as head honcho. As with Aja's abandoning The Hills Have Eyes sequel, his influence feels sorely lost here. It's not as taut as Aja's Piranha; the scale of the action smaller and less impressive. Maddy (Panabaker) returns to her small American hometown after going away to study fish at University. The water park she co-owns with stepfather Chet (Koechner) is undergoing a big renovation. Chet is turning 'The Big Wet' into an adult water park, in which boobs are the order of the day. But in siphoning the water from an underground lakes, Chet is just asking for trouble. And piranhas.   

And yet, piranha teeth are only the second most set of impressive gnashers in this Piranha movie. As its predecessor did with grumpy Richard Dreyfuss, the film opens with a celebrity cameo from one Gary Busey and a farting cow. He's just one of a stream of cameos that makes Piranha 3DD so much fun to sit through. Christopher Lloyd reprises his role from the original, as does a decidedly shorter Ving Rhames. Best of all though, is the film's secret weapon - David Hasselhoff, gamely playing himself as the water park's celebrity lifeguard. I left the cinema with the Baywatch theme tune stuck in my head. And yes, he does do the running-in-slow-motion thing. "Welcome to rock bottom," the Hoff says, as he first enters The Big Wet. Hardly. If anything, it's a career highlight. The script is deliriously filthy, but it's Hoff's delivery of "little ginger moron" that emerges triumphant (certainly more so than the predictable and over-repeated "Josh cut off his penis because something came out of my vagina").

It's a sleazy, low-rent sequel to something that was already pretty sleazy and low-rent. The nudity is made more blatant than before (oh, but all those three dimensional diddies) and the action is scaled back and more personal. A Nightmare On Elm Street/Slither bathtub scene is predictable, but most of it works well. The 3D is suited to the material and fairly unobtrusive, because if I am gonna spend money on stupid 3D glasses, it had better show me interesting things, like vomit and bosoms and gore.

Piranha 3DD delivers the best mid-credits scene of the year. Balls to Thanos, his moment of glory outshone by David Hasselhoff in a 3D booby movie.