TERRIBLE POSTER TUESDAY: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 3-D

Texas Chainsaw massacre superfans are a breed unlike any other in the world of horror fandoms.  Seriously, those that belong to "The Saw Is Family" way of life fit right in with the Buffy shippers and Whovians.  I have been trying my hardest to keep myself as free from knowledge about this remake/reimaging/reboot/rewhatever so I can give it a fair view when it releases, but I cannot prevent the furious littering of superfan tirades from appearing on my social networking news-feeds.  Ladies and germs, this is how I was introduced to this absolutely treacherous advertisement.  The worst part about this poster is the fact it exists alongside this absolutely beautiful poster.  It's painfully obvious that whoever in charge of marketing only wanted to dish out the cash for one of the advertisements.  While one poster was brilliant and enticing to look at, the other was a rehashing of a poster we've seen about ten million times before it.  To put it simply, this is painfully generic and not worth a bead of ass sweat on the taint of the TCM franchise. 

The complete and utter lack of originality is first and foremost the most offensive aspect of the entire poster.  The solid color background, bright red font, and half shown image of someone from the chest down facing away from the camera wielding a weapon has been done more times than a "shoot them in the head" line in a zombie film.  Not only that, but the dramatic lighting that somehow reflects in the wrong part of the weapon in comparison to where it shadows the person holding it is another trend that needs to quickly end.  It's absolutely infuriating to try and have hope for a remake when it is already setting the tone that it will follow the same path as all of the horror movie remakes that have come before it.  Amateur, generic, and disappointing.  The man with the chainsaw appears to be more of a rough and tumble lumberjack than Leatherface, a very edited Leatherface.  Seriously, this image has gone through more filters than a girl with an acne problem on instagram. Everything looks unnatural and a bit too staged for my liking. 

Let's take a side step for a quick second and discuss that God forsaken font.  My god.  This font is to horror movies what Helvetica is to hipsters.  WHY?!  Why must every. single. horror. movie. poster. use. the. same. damn. red. font?! WE GET IT. IT'S A HORROR MOVIE. THE RED SYMBOLIZES BLOOD. WAH WAH WAH. Show some damn creativity!  Show me something that isn't in all caps, show me something in green, show me anything than this damn font in red lettering in all caps!  It wouldn't be nearly as bad if the film didn't use the same font as the SAW franchise, you know, because the word "saw" is in "chainsaw" and that makes it all the more obvious that the graphic designer is ripping off another film.  Coming from the same producers or not, using the exact same font is incredibly lazy.  Now some may try to write it off as a "strategy" to elicit the same emotion by viewing it as audiences would see with the SAW posters, but I don't buy that. It's lazy marketing. Lazy. Lazy. Lazy.

Plastered in tiny font and quite ill-placed is "Buzz. Kill."  Presumably, this is the tagline.  The amount of face in my palm is unmeasurable.  When I read this tagline, my only response is one similar to Peter Griffin on Family Guy whenever he is forced to listen through anything from Buzz Killington.  I know that the audiences of today tend to be a bit stupid (I mean, they'd have to be to crank out that much money for Twilight and only a fraction of it for DREDD) but don't insult the fine folk.  Everyone has at least HEARD of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Don't insult our intelligence, and please don't take tagline advice from people who write jokes for Laffy Taffy candy wrappers.

Despite popular belief, I've noticed that it's pretty easy to judge a film by it's poster.  There are always exceptions, but the rule of thumb tends to be that a shitty poster will accompany a shitty film.  Now, I am going to go into this film expecting less than I would from a four year old not whining in a grocery store, but this poster did not change my already preconceived opinion.  If anything, I'm now going to be heading into that theatre even more weary as I originally intended. Damn it.