Texas Chainsaw 3D2013

The Review

First, the title — because the title is the first trap this film sets, and it has been tripping people up for thirteen years.

It is Texas Chainsaw 3D. On screen and on home media it is styled simply as Texas Chainsaw — no “Massacre” anywhere. And it is not a remake. It is a direct sequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), and it ignores everything in between: not Part 2, not Part 3, not The Next Generation, not the 2003 remake, not The Beginning. Copy calling it “the 2013 remake” or a sequel to the 2003 film is wrong. It is the seventh installment, and it is the one that pretends the other five never happened — the same trick Halloween (2018) would pull five years later, and this film got there first. The tagline is “Evil wears Many Faces,” and the film means it literally: Leatherface wears a new one in this picture, cut from a dead policeman.

Second, the fact that explains everything else about this film — because without it, nothing in it makes sense, and every bad summary of it starts by getting it wrong.

This film picks up where the 1974 original left off, forty years later, and the timeline does not add up — and the production knew it. In 1973, after Sally Hardesty escapes the Sawyer farmhouse and gives her statement to the police, the people of Newt, Texas, led by Mayor Burt Hartman, arrive and burn the farmhouse down in vigilante revenge. The arsonists are proclaimed heroes; the whole Sawyer family is believed killed. But an infant with a burn mark on her chest is found by townsman Gavin Miller, who murders her mother, Loretta Sawyer, on the spot — and Gavin and his wife Arlene take the child and raise her as their own daughter. That infant is Heather. And Heather is played, in the present-day story, as a nineteen-year-old. An infant rescued in 1973 cannot be nineteen in the present day, and the film does not try to hide it. The production record is blunt about it: the Luessenhop and Elms revisions moved the setting from 1993 to the present day but retained Heather’s age of nineteen, script consultant Scott Milam questioned the discrepancy, and producer Carl Mazzocone told him, as the production record carries it, “the audience is not going to care.” The plot summaries disagree on the present-day year: one strand says 2012, the fan wiki says 2013.

The heroine is the film’s first real asset, and its best casting decision. Alexandra Daddario as Heather Miller — a young woman who discovers she was adopted, inherits a Texas mansion from a grandmother she never knew, and drives down with her boyfriend Ryan, her best friend Nikki, and Nikki’s boyfriend Kenny, picking up hitchhiker Darryl on the way. Daddario was cast in July 2011 and met with Marilyn Burns in preparation, and she gives the film more than it deserves: a heroine who is game, funny, and believable in a film that keeps asking her to do impossible things. She is the reason the film works at all — because the film’s gamble only works if you believe Heather, and Daddario makes you believe her, right up to the moment she hands a chainsaw back to a mass murderer and tells him to do his thing.

The man with the saw is the film’s other casting story, and it is a sadder one. Dan Yeager is Leatherface here — the sixth actor to play him on screen, cast, as the production record puts it, for his “severe demeanour” despite minimal acting experience. Gunnar Hansen did not play Leatherface here either. Hansen — the original Leatherface, the man in the mask in 1974 — plays Boss Sawyer, a member of the family, in a cameo. Leatherface here is Yeager, and Yeager is the only Leatherface of this film. His name in the film is Jedidiah “Jed” Sawyer — though one cast list prints “Jeddiah.” And the family around him is a reunion tour: Marilyn Burns, Sally Hardesty herself in 1974, plays Verna Carson (née Sawyer), Heather’s grandmother — not Sally. John Dugan reprises Grandfather Sawyer from 1974. And Bill Moseley — Chop Top in Part 2 — plays Drayton Sawyer here, replacing Jim Siedow, who died in 2003. This was the last film for both Burns, who died on August 5, 2014, and Hansen, who died on November 7, 2015 — and the film carries that weight whether it means to or not. Four beloved cast members from the original, back in one picture, and two of them never made another.

The plot, once Heather reaches the house, runs the way a slasher should run — one room at a time, each one worse than the last. Darryl, left to look after the house while the others buy food, starts stealing valuables, unlocks the basement door, and is killed by Leatherface. Kenny goes to the cellar while preparing dinner; Leatherface impales him on a hook, then slices him in half with a chainsaw. Heather finds Verna’s decomposing body upstairs and is attacked by Leatherface in the kitchen, but escapes. Nikki and Ryan draw Leatherface’s attention while Heather gets the van; Leatherface cuts a tyre with his chainsaw, the van crashes, and Ryan is killed on impact. Heather flees to a nearby carnival, where Deputy Carl is patrolling. At the police department, Heather digs through the files, learns how the Sawyer family was killed, and begins empathising with them. The sheriff and Burt send an officer to investigate the Carson estate; over the phone the officer reports his findings, finds Nikki hiding in a freezer, inadvertently shoots her dead, and is himself killed by Leatherface with an axe — who then cuts the skin from the officer’s face and makes a new mask. Burt vows to finish the remaining Sawyers. Heather leaves the station, meets her lawyer at a bar, and learns the truth: Leatherface is her cousin, Jedidiah Sawyer, who survived the farmhouse burning. She flees when Burt finds her and runs into Deputy Carl in his patrol car — who reveals himself as Burt’s son, kidnaps her, and takes her to the Sawyer family’s slaughterhouse, tying her up to lure Leatherface.

And then the ending, which is the part the film is famous for, and the part the critics hated most — so get it right. Leatherface learns Heather’s location over the dead officer’s police radio and goes to the slaughterhouse — but releases her after seeing a Sawyer sigil birthmark on her chest. Burt and a friend attack Leatherface from behind. Heather escapes, then returns: she kills Burt’s friend and tosses Leatherface his chainsaw — the “Do your thing, cuz!” beat. The sheriff arrives but hesitates to stop Leatherface from killing Burt; Leatherface severs both of Burt’s hands with the chainsaw, and Burt falls into a meat grinder. The sheriff lets Heather and Leatherface go. They return to the Carson estate, where Heather finally reads Verna’s letter: her real name is Edith Rose Sawyer; Leatherface lives in the basement behind the metal door and will protect her for the rest of his life, and she is asked to take care of him in return. Watching Leatherface bury Verna’s body with great care, Heather accepts how his mental state drove his crimes, notes how elderly he has become, and accepts him as her only family. And then the sting: her adoptive parents, Gavin and Arlene, arrive at the estate to visit — and Leatherface answers the door, chainsaw in hand.

That ending is the film’s whole gamble. This review describes the turn; it does not endorse it. The film asks you to forgive a man who has just sawn people in half, because his family was burned alive forty years ago and because he buries his grandmother gently. It is a big ask, and the film does not earn it — but it is also the only interesting thing in the picture, and the reason the film is still argued about. The 1974 original made Leatherface a force of nature. This film makes him a victim with a chainsaw, and then asks you to root for him. Some viewers do. Most critics did not. It is the film’s most criticised decision, and it is also its only memorable one.

The production around all of it was a scramble with a famous punchline, and the punchline is the reason the film looks the way it does. After The Beginning‘s modest success, Platinum Dunes declined a third remake-timeline film. Mark Burg and Oren Koules of Twisted Pictures pursued the rights from New Line; Stephen Susco drafted a prospective film and mapped a trilogy — shot on 16mm, the first film exploring the Sawyer backstory and bringing back Sally Hardesty — and James Wan was slated to direct the first entry, with Tobe Hooper and Neil Marshall considered for later entries. Wan left to direct Insidious. Lionsgate then mandated a PG-13 rating, a contemporary setting, 3D, and no cannibalism — partly because The Midnight Meat Train had bombed — and Susco reconfigured to jump forward after an opening where Sally is killed off. Lionsgate rejected that draft and asked for a film closely following the original. By October 2010, Adam Marcus and Debra Sullivan were writing a new script from scratch, beginning where the original ended but set mainly in 1993. They departed after being asked to rewrite without payment. John Luessenhop, selected in May 2011, and Kirsten Elms rewrote, keeping the 1973 opening but moving the setting to the present day while retaining Heather’s age of nineteen — the timeline gap, born right there, in the rewrite room.

The shoot was the 3D gimmick made flesh, and the gimmick was not the director’s idea. The presentation in 3D was a Lionsgate mandate, not a choice Luessenhop made, and the production’s difficulties with the RED Epic rig are part of the record. Principal photography was underway by late July 2011 in Shreveport, Louisiana, shot in 3D on RED Epic cameras over 28 days on a $20 million budget. Temperatures reached 114 degrees Fahrenheit; crew members were hospitalised and equipment overheated. Luessenhop called 3D filming “cumbersome” and “tedious” and said the film was “shot a lot more like a Hitchcock movie” because of the limitations. Near the end, the crew switched to a 24-hour schedule; the 3D engineer was pulled to second-unit stereography; cinematographer Anastas N. Michos stepped down near the end of production. Original-film footage was converted to 3D in post; post-production concluded in June 2012. That is the most honest summary of the shoot: a horror film made in 114-degree heat with cameras that kept overheating, by a director who wanted to shoot Hitchcock and was told to shoot 3D.

And then the censors got it, and the censors are part of the release story. The film was originally scheduled for October 5, 2012, and moved to January 4, 2013. Luessenhop called the move a “business decision”; Bloody Disgusting reported the film was being recut after receiving an NC-17 from the MPAA. The January date is the film’s real distinction in one other way: it opened at number one, ahead of Django Unchained and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, in the dead week of the year, and it did it with a $21.7 million opening weekend — $21,744,470 by Box Office Mojo’s domestic table — on a $20 million budget. The second weekend fell to $5.2 million, ninth place; the third, over the Martin Luther King Jr. four-day weekend, to $1.4 million, nineteenth. It finished at $34,341,945 domestic — a figure both trackers agree on — with a worldwide total of $47,340,586 by Box Office Mojo and $47,666,013 by The Numbers, printed side by side, never averaged. The commercial verdict the record supports is this: tracked box office more than doubles the production budget, so the studio’s exit from the franchise was not a commercial verdict but a strategic one, happening before the home-media numbers landed.

The critics of 2013 were not kind. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it a C+, with 63% of the audience under 25. IGN’s Eric Goldman called it “a generic and laughable attempt to follow the original,” a few fun 3D-aided jump-scares aside. The Wrap‘s Alonso Duralde called it “a dreary slog through the dreadfully familiar.” Empire‘s Kim Newman gave it one star, saying the film “trips… over dumb plot twists, poor performances and inept would-be suspense scenes.” Against them, Variety‘s Joe Leydon was the outlier, calling it “a better-than-average horror-thriller that relies more on potent suspense than graphic savagery or stereoscopic tricks.” The 2013 critics were not wrong that it is a mess. They were wrong that it does not matter. It matters because it is the first film in the franchise to make Leatherface the hero of his own story — and because, thirteen years later, the “Do your thing, cuz!” moment is still the most quoted line in the whole series, for better and for worse. Daddario said in a 2021 Collider interview, as carried in secondary coverage, that she pleaded with producers to cut the line, feeling it too silly; the producer replied, “This is the movie… It’s supposed to be silly, and the audience is supposed to laugh and be scared.” She was right that it is silly. He was right that it is the movie.

One more thing worth knowing before you watch: what came after, and what did not. Daddario, Eastwood and Thom Barry were signed for sequels, and under the working title Texas Chainsaw 4 a sequel screenplay was shepherded — but the producers’ option neared expiry, a Scott Milam draft was rejected as too expensive, and the follow-up became the prequel Leatherface, released October 20, 2017, with no returning actors from this film. Eastwood signed for a trilogy that never happened. The branch ends here, after one film — a direct sequel to 1974 that spawned no sequel of its own, and whose next entry rebooted the timeline again from scratch. This film is the end of a branch, and it ends the way it began, with a farmhouse burning and a baby in the arms of the man who killed her mother.

And a word on the names, because the film’s paperwork is a minefield. The on-screen title drops “Massacre” entirely — it is Texas Chainsaw, and the full title Texas Chainsaw 3D is used only where the 3D presentation is the point. Heather’s real name is Edith Rose Sawyer, and Leatherface’s is Jedidiah “Jed” Sawyer — one lineage prints “Jeddiah” in its cast list. Burns is Verna Carson, not Sally Hardesty; Hansen is Boss Sawyer, not Leatherface; Moseley is Drayton Sawyer, not Chop Top. And the home-media date is contested by one day — May 13, 2013 in one lineage, May 14 in another.

Spoiler Section

Stop here if you have never seen it. The family keeps its secrets for first-timers.

It opens in 1973. After Sally Hardesty escapes the Sawyer farmhouse and gives her statement to the police, the people of Newt, Texas, led by Mayor Burt Hartman, arrive and burn the farmhouse down in vigilante revenge. The arsonists are proclaimed heroes; the whole Sawyer family is believed killed. But an infant with a burn mark on her chest is found by townsman Gavin Miller, who murders her mother, Loretta Sawyer, on the spot. Gavin and his wife Arlene take the child and raise her as their own daughter.

In the present day, Heather Miller discovers she was adopted after receiving a letter saying her grandmother, Verna Carson, has died. She, boyfriend Ryan, best friend Nikki, and Nikki’s boyfriend Kenny drive to Verna’s home to collect the inheritance, picking up hitchhiker Darryl on the way. At the house, Verna’s lawyer Farnsworth gives Heather a letter from Verna, which she neglects to read. The group decides to stay the night; Heather and her friends leave to buy food, leaving Darryl to look after the house. Darryl starts stealing valuables, unlocks the basement door, and is killed by Leatherface.

Heather and her friends return to find the house ransacked. Kenny goes to the cellar while preparing dinner; Leatherface impales him on a hook, then slices him in half with a chainsaw. Heather finds Verna’s decomposing body upstairs and is attacked by Leatherface in the kitchen, but escapes. Nikki and Ryan draw Leatherface’s attention while Heather gets the van and picks up her friends; Leatherface cuts a tyre with his chainsaw, the van crashes, and Ryan is killed on impact. Heather flees to a nearby carnival, where Deputy Carl is patrolling.

At the police department, Heather digs through the files, learns how the Sawyer family was killed, and begins empathising with them. The sheriff and Burt send an officer to investigate the Carson estate; over the phone the officer reports his findings, finds Nikki hiding in a freezer, inadvertently shoots her dead, and is himself killed by Leatherface with an axe. Leatherface cuts the skin from the officer’s face and makes a new mask.

Burt vows to finish the remaining Sawyers. Heather leaves the station and meets her lawyer at a bar; he tells her Leatherface is her cousin, Jedidiah Sawyer, who survived the farmhouse burning. Heather flees when Burt finds her and runs into Deputy Carl in his patrol car. Carl reveals himself as Burt’s son, kidnaps her, and takes her to the Sawyer family’s slaughterhouse, tying her up to lure Leatherface.

Ending. Leatherface learns Heather’s location over the dead officer’s police radio and goes to the slaughterhouse — but releases her after seeing a Sawyer sigil birthmark on her chest. Burt and a friend attack Leatherface from behind. Heather escapes, then returns: she kills Burt’s friend with a pitchfork and tosses Leatherface his chainsaw — “Do your thing, cuz!” The sheriff arrives but hesitates to stop Leatherface from killing Burt; Leatherface severs both of Burt’s hands with the chainsaw, and Burt falls into a meat grinder. The sheriff lets Heather and Leatherface go. They return to the Carson estate, where Heather finally reads Verna’s letter: her real name is Edith Rose Sawyer; Leatherface lives in the basement behind the metal door and will protect her for the rest of his life, and she is asked to take care of him in return. Watching Leatherface bury Verna’s body with great care, Heather accepts how his mental state drove his crimes, notes how elderly he has become, and accepts him as her only family.

Post-credits scene. Heather’s adoptive parents, Gavin and Arlene, arrive at the estate to visit her — and Leatherface answers the door, chainsaw in hand.

Trivia

• Not a remake. This film is a direct sequel to the 1974 original — the seventh installment — and it ignores the five films in between, sequels and remakes alike. Halloween (2018) would do the same trick five years later.
• The title drops “Massacre.” On screen and on home media, the film is styled simply as Texas Chainsaw.
• The first and only 3D entry. The only film in the franchise released in 3D — and the 3D was a Lionsgate mandate, not the director’s choice.
• The timeline does not add up. An infant rescued from the 1973 fire is played as a nineteen-year-old in the present day. Producer Carl Mazzocone, when the discrepancy was questioned, reportedly said “the audience is not going to care.”
• The present-day year is disputed. One strand of the record says 2012, the fan wiki says 2013.
• “Do your thing, cuz!” Daddario pleaded with producers to cut the line in a 2021 interview account, feeling it too silly. The producer replied: “This is the movie… It’s supposed to be silly, and the audience is supposed to laugh and be scared.”
• 114 degrees. The Shreveport shoot hit 114 °F; crew members were hospitalised and equipment overheated. Luessenhop called 3D filming “cumbersome” and “tedious.”
• 28 days, RED Epic. Principal photography ran 28 days in Shreveport, Louisiana, shot in 3D on RED Epic cameras — and ended on a 24-hour schedule.
• James Wan was supposed to direct it. Wan was slated for the first entry of Susco’s planned trilogy, then left to direct Insidious. Hooper and Neil Marshall were considered for later entries.
• The mandates. Lionsgate required a PG-13 rating, a contemporary setting, 3D, and no cannibalism — partly because The Midnight Meat Train had bombed.
• The delay has two versions. Luessenhop called the move from October 5, 2012 to January 4, 2013 a “business decision”; Bloody Disgusting reported an NC-17 recut.
• Number one in January. It opened at #1 ahead of Django Unchained and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, with $21.7 million in its opening weekend.
• The sixth Leatherface. Dan Yeager is the sixth actor to play Leatherface on screen, cast for his “severe demeanour” despite minimal acting experience.
• A first for the series. Trey Songz is the first Black actor in a leading role in the series.
• The trilogy that never happened. Scott Eastwood signed on for a trilogy. The sequel became the prequel Leatherface (2017), with no returning actors.
• Moseley is Drayton, not Chop Top. Bill Moseley, Chop Top in Part 2, plays Drayton Sawyer here, replacing Jim Siedow, who died in 2003.
• Burns is Verna, not Sally. Marilyn Burns plays Verna Carson here, not Sally Hardesty. Hansen plays Boss Sawyer, not Leatherface. John Dugan reprises Grandfather.
• The last film for two legends. This was the final film for both Marilyn Burns (died August 5, 2014) and Gunnar Hansen (died November 7, 2015).
• The post-credits sting. Heather’s adoptive parents arrive to visit — and Leatherface answers the door, chainsaw in hand.
• The home-media date is disputed by one day. May 13, 2013 in one lineage, May 14 in another.

Where to Watch

Checked November 9, 2026. Streaming rights shift — check your service before you settle in.

• Rent or buy: Amazon Video, Apple TV, Fandango At Home (JustWatch, checked November 9, 2026)

Stream: The Roku Channel (with ads), YouTube TV, and Fawesome (free) (JustWatch, checked November 9, 2026).

The Verdict

Texas Chainsaw 3D is the Chainsaw film that bet everything on one idea and lost the critics and won the opening weekend — a direct sequel to 1974 that ignores forty years of franchise history, hands the saw to a new man, puts a future movie star in the family, and then asks you to root for the monster. It is loud, and it is silly, and the timeline does not add up, and the middle sags around leads who are given almost nothing to play but fear — and it is also the most purely entertaining bad-good entry in the series, because Alexandra Daddario commits to it completely, because the returning 1974 cast gives it a weight no other sequel has, and because the ending — the chainsaw toss, the severed hands, the meat grinder, the letter, the door opening on the adoptive parents — is the most memorable climax the franchise has produced since the dinner scene. The 2013 critics were not wrong that it is a mess. They were wrong that it does not matter. It matters because it is the first film in the franchise to make Leatherface the hero of his own story, and because it proved, with a number-one opening on a $20 million budget, that the audience wanted the saw back even when the critics did not. Watch it for Daddario, watch it for the fire, watch it for the four familiar faces from 1974, and forgive it the maths. It only wanted to bring the family home. Forever.

2.5 out of 5 ravens.