2022 Reviews – Texas Chainsaw Massacre

As an astute patron of the social reviewing platform Letterboxd puts it, ‘just watch the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and then stop.’ I know this to be good advice, because I’ve spent the past few months trudging my way through the entire franchise for myself… I was inspired by X; I saw that many reviewers were mentioning the similarities between Ti West’s fantastic new release and the old Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and felt those gruesome movies needed to be covered in my mental movie oil spill. I’ve never really seen a franchise like this one – so many tonal shifts, and different interpretations of the characters; it’s a complete smorgasbord of creative endeavours, timeline jumps, and failures. Texas Chainsaw 3D could be the most mind-numbing movie I’ve ever seen. And with that said, I come into this final offering very worse for wear. I’m not expecting great things, but let’s see what 2022 contributes.

Four youthful innocents travel through rural Texas, where Melody (Sarah Yarkin) and Dante (Jacob Latimore) among them have bought deeds to a desolate town, in the hope to repopulate it with a peaceful vision of the future (🙄 roll your eyes, but it gets better). The pair enter one dilapidated house and discover a woman is still living there, where an altercation leads to the awakening of the face-wearing, chainsaw-wielding, bloody tendencies of her silent co-tenant. Set in the present day, this makes Leatherface (now played by Mark Burnham) an old man, and the movie states that he has never been found, despite the authorities search for him since the wicked murders that occurred in the 1970s, covered by the very first film. Timid Lila (Elsie Fisher) is another of the group, less invested in her fellow’s utopian intentions, and still shell-shocked by a recent experience with gun violence that happened at her school. She is much happier getting acquainted with a grubby chain-smoking local mechanic Richter (Moe Dunford), who may or may not be so trustworthy. Director David Blue Garcia, good luck.

These main characters are the scourge of modern youth. Conceited, blunt, and intitled, it was never going to be an option to root for their survival, but anticipating their demise was much more enticing. It took me a while to figure out where the movie sits with them though – is it satirising our hopeful protagonists or is it taking their side? Then the worst of them takes a pipeful of shit to the eye and I realised my distain was well placed 😀 As Leatherface enters the party bus scene, it feels like the dogged 70s being plonked straight into the modern day, and these Gen Z don’t stand a chance. Paper beats rock, just like chainsaw beats live-stream every day of the week. Personally, I like my Leatherface as a beta simpleton, where the people around him are more inclined to the maniacal scheming, and Leatherface is most preoccupied with the preparing of flesh rather than the joyful murder. But this movie embraces Leatherface as an unstoppable killing machine, taking glee in the spree. And movie, if that’s the angle you want to pursue, then just make it entertaining, which I’m glad to report, it does. I found this movie to be deliciously gory, with one particular ambulance scene exceptionally intense as all get out. Dante’s blonde girlfriend Ruth (Nell Hudson) actually seemed to be the most kind-hearted of the four main protagonists, so it was delightfully cruel seeing her taken out while a single tear rolled down her cheek. Although I must admit, I began to think of Texas Chainsaw Massacre as just another horror movie in the beginning, detached from the movies I’d seen before, because it’s jolting being set down in a built-up ghost town, and bringing an orphanage into lore; yet as I said in the opening, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre has undergone so many alterations over the years, and this is just another writer’s interpretation. Leatherface does seem subdued by his mother figure, Ginny (Alice Krige), until she’s gone, and then Leatherface reverts back to the carnage he be loving. And once he starts smashing in at that wall, it’s clear that all that’s going to matter is the power tool that waits on the other side ⛓

Some of Texas Chainsaw Massacre is on the nose, like how all the partygoers bring out their phones in unison when there’s a very visceral threat in front of them. I also wish the movie wasn’t so pro-gun, and it brings in real socio-political issues, like school shootings and confederate history, but doesn’t really know what to do with them – am I supposed to side with the vain teens, or the murderer-harbouring hicks? Also-also, Texas Ranger Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré) seems to live forever where any other minor character would be dead before they hit the ground. Yes, you read that right, the Sally Hardesty, from the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now, I haven’t seen Halloween (2018), or any of the Halloween movies for that matter, but I understand that Jamie Lee Curtis returns as the heroine to get some revenge on her own masked mass murderer there too; that movie was successful, and this Texas Chainsaw Massacre is either second to the punch, or completely ripping off their idea here. I never thought of Sally toughening up to track down Leatherface for her own vendetta, but I’ve never really thought much about Sally at all, or what she’d be up to, but I believe her here. Perhaps the actress has attended all those horror-cons and was disappointed that she never got an onscreen send-off at the hands of a chainsaw after seeing the adoration for a franchise she helped found. Well then, here you go – you’ve been filleted and elevated, literally elevated… (Or at least that’s what would’ve thought if I hadn’t discovered that Sally’s original actress, Marylin Burns, passed away in 2014, being replaced by Olwen Fouéré here. Now it seems like the writers just wanted to tie this movie to the original, like what’s the common vein with ‘requels’ these days).

This is the first time I’ve truly noticed being a decade or so older than the youth of the day; maybe they’ve always been shitbags, but I’ve always been part of them or looking up at them for inspiration, where now I can look down and see how completely inept they can be. Having absorbed all that, I know I’ve been hurt before, so my confidence in this franchise is a little shaken, but this is the best Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel to date. It’s not high art, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

3.5