Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)

A horror movie with Renee Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey?!  How freakin' random.  Not that McConaughey's never been in a horror movie.  We all remember the sleeper hit Frailty, don't we?  Renee made this movie right around the same time as Empire Records, and she's just as cute, minus the sluttiness.   Especially if you any of you horror nerds have a thing for girls in geeky glasses.

So, what's up with this sequel?  Apparently it was intended to be the "real" sequel to the original, apparently eschewing the gloriousness that is Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.  I actually kind of want to have babies with that movie, so I don't know what awesomeness-hating individual wouldn't call that a "real" sequel.  Also, I kind of forgot about Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3, so this is essentially the fourth of the series. 

Anyway, it looks like they planned on two of the characters being the cook and hitchhiker from the original but that didn't quite pan out.  This got released at a bunch of film festivals as The Return of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with little success.  The movie got shelved for three years, then re-released under this title, once it's stars had gotten big in Hollywood.

Aside from a few roles, I've always found Matthew McConaughey to be a meh actor but damn if he doesn't play a decent backwoods hick.  However, this appears to be less a sequel, and more a half-assed remake.  There's even some of the same scenes, like the meat hook and dinner with corpses.  Everyone in this movie is so goddamn stupid that it's almost unbelievable.  Basically, this group of kids are at prom, but a few end up driving off randomly and ending up in the clutches of Leatherface and his clan.

Leatherface looks decidedly bizarre in this movie.  Why is he dressed as a woman?  Did I miss something?  Vilmer (McConaughey) is all kinds of Otis Driftwood psycho-sexy.  I know, I'm a demented person.    WTF is up with the robotic leg though?  That's just weird.  From there, it traipses about like a sort of remake.  People have "dinner" with corpses, violent fights ensue, and Leatherface runs around with a chainsaw.  We even get treated to a horrible "reimagining" of the final scene of the original, with Leatherface's frustrated spinning in circles.

Was this the worst movie, or sequel I've ever seen?  No.  But it has very little redeeming value, even though I'm not begging for those 1.5 hours of my life back.  It was entertaining on some level, and there was some eye candy, but there was really no reason for it to have been made in the first place.