No sequel since 1974 – with the exception of the 2003 remake – has quite managed to evoke that same visceral feeling of total discomfort and unsettling grossness as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The latest attempt at recapturing the magic hails from Netflix and part of the creative team behind the excellent Evil Dead remake. Sounds promising? Not so. The 2022 reincarnation of Texas Chainsaw is another hollow sequel – this time following in the same legacy-sequel vein of 2018’s Halloween – filled with half-baked social commentary, godawful characters and only the faintest hint of an actual story. Some inventive kills and unintentionally hilarious moments provide something to latch onto, but by and large this is yet another carnage-filled swing and a miss.
When a group of friends – Dante (Jacob Latimore), girlfriend Ruth (Nell Hudson), creative partner Melody (Sarah Yarkin) and her sister Lila (Elsie Fisher) – move to the rural Texan town of Harlow in hopes of creating a gentrified, hipster-filled neighbourhood, they find themselves in trouble when their presence disturbs local orphanage owner Ginny (Alice Krige), causing a heart attack. With a busload of potential investors due in town at any moment, the group scramble to contain the situation and make the town presentable, with one small hitch: the hulking presence of Ginny’s adopted son, colloquially known as Leatherface (Mark Burnham). When news of Leatherface’s return is heard by ranger Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré) – sole survivor of the original 1974 massacre – she heads straight into the belly of the beast for a showdown almost 50 years in the making.
It’s not a surprise that Texas Chainsaw Massacre is this bad. None of the recent sequels (2003 remake withstanding) have been the least bit successful in balancing an emotionally impactful story with the gore fans expect. But here’s the thing: Texas Chainsaw films don’t need an emotionally impactful story. The original masterpiece was never built around the complex relationships between its five innocent college student victims or the intricacies of Leatherface’s psyche. This was a crazy family terrorising a group of kids for the sheer deranged pleasure of it. By loading this latest film with such annoying characters – constant mouth-pieces spouting weak social commentary – it fails to build even the slightest connection with the audience, wasting a huge chunk of the runtime in the process. We’re talking about gun-control, gentrification and millennial cancel-culture and all of it completely falls by the wayside once characters come face to face with a roaring chainsaw.
Lila’s entire character revolves around her survivor mentality, having lived through a traumatic school-shooting, with several scenes highlighting her aversion to guns and the wounds she carries as a result of this tragedy. Just when you start to think we might have something of a rounded character on our hands she picks up an assault rifle without hesitation and unloads it into Leatherface. Now that might be a logical reaction to seeing multiple people dismembered before your eyes but why waste the time setting this character up in the way she is if it is never paid off. Similarly the cancel-culture references seem to be in there solely for a few very cheap jokes that completely fall flat. Who is all this for? Certainly not fans who want to see chainsaw goodness.
Once the killing starts the film’s pacing evens out but none of these scenes are particularly noteworthy for the franchise apart from the absolute hilarity of seeing Leatherface launch himself out of water like a scene from Free Willy or hurl a hammer at someone so hard they fly away like a football through the posts. The man is pushing 70 at this point and we’re expected to believe he can carve up a busload of people without dislocating a hip? Give me a break. A few inspired shots – a corn-field surprise is a terrifying and iconic image – and some decent jump scares help things out but can’t do much to alleviate the disappointment at Sally’s return. In what is clearly a pale imitation of Laurie Strode’s return in Halloween, Sally has a bone to pick with Leatherface, but if you haven’t seen the original film prepare to be confused.
We know that Sally has beef with Leatherface from one half-assed scene of her stroking a photograph of her friends and loading a shotgun as she listens to a police scanner. Cut to five minutes before the film ends when she finally arrives without so much as an introduction – even the characters in the movie are confused as to why she is even here – and that’s about it for our “legacy heroine”. It’s completely baffling as to why the filmmakers even bothered to include the character if they had this little use for her, playing a card that could have been far better utilised as the focus of a character-study deconstructing the trauma’s effect on her life. Sally joins a growing list of this franchise’s paper-thin characters; hell, even the guy who threatens to cancel Leatherface has more firepower up his sleeve.
If you like mindless, gory horror films without much substance then Texas Chainsaw Massacre might be for you, just be prepared to endure some painfully trite social commentary on the way to it. If you’re coming to this looking for that elusive sequel worthy of Tobe Hooper’s original then look elsewhere, say to (you guessed it) the 2003 remake? It might finally be time for Leatherface to put down his trusty chainsaw, haven’t we all suffered enough?
Texas Chainsaw Massacre stars Elsie Fisher, Sarah Yarkin, Jacob Latimore, Mark Burnham, Moe Dunford, Nell Hudson, Jessica Allain & Olwen Fouéré – Streaming on Netflix now.