Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)
February 21, 2022 8:16 AM - Subscribe

After nearly 50 years of hiding, Leatherface returns to terrorize a group of idealistic young friends who accidentally disrupt his carefully shielded world in a remote Texas town.

This is a direct sequel to 1974's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ignoring any sequels, prequels, reboots, and remakes.
posted by Captain_Science (9 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
This was pretty bad. The hippies from the original have been replaced with hipster influencers who for the most part are insufferable to the point you are more rooting for leatherface then anyone else. The party bus scene was specifically cringeworthy "you're going to be canceled!".

This had the feel someone taking a generic "country folk vs kids" movie and just changing some place names to make it a Texas Chainsaw movie. The final girl from the first movie back for revenge felt sort of tacked on and ultimately didn't really go anywhere. They should of either focused either entirely on her or just left it out completely. Also "the return of leatherface" as the killer made very little sense. He looked to be an adult in his 20s or 30s but if its the same guy from 1974 he would have to be in his mid to late 60s by not, if not older (yeah horror movie killers can age weird....lets not even try and talk about Friday the 13ths Jasons timeline) but this is supposed to be just a straight forward "50 years later".

From the purely gore standpoint there were a few decent kills, and the ending was a decent homage to the original with the addition of the self driving car.
posted by Captain_Science at 8:29 AM on February 21, 2022 [1 favorite]


I was mixed in my response. Most of the characters are indeed insufferable and they did Sally dirty with having her not blow Leatherface away when she had the chance.

I agree as a sequel it didn't really gel because Sally has clearly aged, but Leatherface didn't. Her presence really called attention to that.

There are some entertaining moments (the bus scene) and indeed some homages to the original, but overall this is a one time watch for me.
posted by miss-lapin at 10:31 AM on February 21, 2022 [2 favorites]


Forgot to add now streaming on Netflix.

Also scored 35% on rotten tomatoes. A reviewer from the Forth Worth Report wrote, "A reboot posing as a sequel with nobody to root for except maybe it's imitation villain whom I have dubbed Pleatherface."
posted by miss-lapin at 10:34 AM on February 21, 2022 [3 favorites]


Considering that the two original filmmakers both made sequels that tacitly admit the impossibility of recapturing the original, I'm not especially enthused.

Specifically, Tobe Hooper made Chainsaw Massacre 2 as a comedy, while writer Kim Henkel made The Next Generation, which subs out the Sawyer family for a new family, the Slaughters, who are sadistic but incapable of the transcendent horror of the first film. And then a guy in a suit walks in, explains that this is something an ancient secret society does on the reg, apparently to produce a Martyrs sort-of ecstatic terror, but these guys are failing at it. Eventually he shuts them down.
posted by maxsparber at 11:27 AM on February 21, 2022 [5 favorites]


Overall I did not like this movie at all, but I have to admit a grudging admiration for how shamelessly mercenary it is. It just barely sets up a bunch of cannon fodder as it sprints to a literal chainsaw massacre at the climax, and then the whole thing is over in 81 minutes. One of the four lead characters who was in the early promotional stills is not even named in the movie before they get killed! Set 'em up, knock 'em down, roll credits, get paid. The truly pointless "legacy sequel" stuff felt really awkwardly shoehorned in, but again: "legacy sequels" are hot right now and they gotta get butts in those seats (or whatever the Netflix equivalent is) by any means necessary.
posted by tomorrowromance at 2:37 PM on February 21, 2022 [2 favorites]


It doesn’t feel like a Texas Chainsaw Massacre film without the cannibalism. I can’t believe I’m saying this but this film needed more cannibalism. Without that one element, this is just another slasher about a masked killer with mommy issues.
posted by cazoo at 7:05 AM on February 22, 2022 [2 favorites]


I really don't get the hate here. It's not the original, and some elements are just weird, but the main cast is likeable/unlikable enough that they feel sort of real (Dante is a nice guy who's also a bit of an asshole, Mel is abrasive but want to do the right thing, Richter is an asshole who is sympathetic to Lila and tries to do the right thing, Sally seemed like a person with complicated long-term trauma, etc). Yes, they are kind of cut outs and the investors are even less than that, but what do you want from an 81 minute blood fest?

Stuff in its favor:
1. There is some real extended tension for Mel in the escape/trapped cycle she gets in
2. Burnham brings a good presence as Leatherface with hulking quiet followed by explosive rage
3. There are some really nicely framed shots, the camerawork and direction is usually effective, and tension is built and released well for the most part
4. There are some good set pieces/kills, although the need to rely on the chainsaw limits creativity
5. If we are going to have a movie where terrified women run away from killers, Mel and Lila are pretty good examples
6. The Lila backstory about the school shooting is used economically but effectively
7. Yes, the party bus scene starts off stupidly absurd, and the whole "I need to film this on my phone" trope is really tired by now, but the bloodbath that follows is efficiently nightmarish. Is it unbelievable? Yes. On the other hand, a chainsaw is absolutely terrible at cutting up meat and would jam pretty much immediately, so let's not lean to heavily on "realism"
8. Sally is convincing as a deeply damaged person whose trauma leads to serious errors in judgement. While I would have enjoyed seeing her blow Leatherface away, the horror of watching her realize that this event that completely defined her life means nothing to the man who did it is also really effective, and her advice to Lila makes her arc feel complete
9. And, as Anthony Hudson pointed out, at last after 50 years, we get an actual chainsaw massacre!

Does it have faults? Yeah, sure (it doesn't quite stick the landing at the end, but gore/slasher horror has been really stuck on needing to have an opening for a sequel for about 40 years now). It's not the original, but nothing can be. The original is 50 years old and set a whole lot of ground rules for modern gore/slasher horror, nothing can do that again, especially not in that grubby, grainy, amateurish way. It was a diverting 81 minutes. Will I watch it again? Probably not, but I have so many films to see that I hardly rewatch anything anymore. This was a better than average film of its genre, not top shelf but not total garbage, and that's fine, especially for streaming.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:08 AM on February 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


Oh, yeah, I forgot -- Olwen Fouéré is pretty amazing, and I hope we get to see more of her. She's in The Northman, I gather?
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:28 AM on February 25, 2022


I saw this and the 2013 Evil Dead in the same day and felt they were markedly similar. In each case, the filmmaker seemed to decide the original succeeded for a combination of reasons based on good central idea, technical proficiency, and lightning-in-a-bottle energy. And in both cases, they seemed to correctly decide that the lightning-in-a-bottle aspect (in Evil Dead's case, Raimi's wildly energetic direction, in this case the crushing existential mood of TCM) could not be replicated, and it made more sense to lean into the other parts.

This didn't succeed to the level that Evil Dead 2013 did, but it worked in its way.

Not a coincidence that Fede Álvarez was a producer here.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:17 AM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]


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