When I saw Tobe Hooper was directing this, I was thinking "Okay, this should be decent, it's the director of the original". Boy was I wrong. This movie didn't seem like a Texas Chainsaw Massacre film at all, it was just some plain, corny, gory flick. One reason is because a lot of it was taken place in a radio station, so the isolation and helplessness that all the other films contain is gone. It seemed like half the movie is Leatherface and ChopTop chasing this radio host around the radio station, which got old really quick. Then it turns out the family's home is a maze of caverns that was formerly a Texas state national park, each tunnel being decorated with lights, furniture, and corpses.
The biggest problem that I have with the film though, is that it lost all similarities with the original film, which I consider to be the best horror film of all time. It's much more comical, and much less serious. The powerful, grainy, realistic aura of the original film is completely lost, this film is more of a quirky freak show of the Sawyer family. It doesn't match up with the terrifying original.
Bottom line is, Mr. Hooper lost what the rest of these films had - the sense of isolation in the Texas country, and the serious, realistic attitude that made the original movie so scary. This film is in my opinion the worst sequel of the series. If you're going to see this, just don't expect anything close to the original. I think that may be the reason I didn't like it as much, I had no idea that it was so different. 5/10.
