The return of Leatherface can’t quite follow through on its interesting ideas, but it does offer some inspired carnage
Tobe Hooper’s 1974 horror masterpiece The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has continued to leave an indelible impact on scary movies to this day. Often imitated but never replicated, his dusty, hot, and psychologically disturbing tale of an unfortunate group of teens who fall prey to a family of cannibals is one of the biggest influences and frameworks for the slasher genre and beyond.
A flurry of sequels, prequels and reboots have steadily been coming out since the 80s, with all of them more or less adhering to the basic concept of the original. Even so, the variety of filmmakers, characters, and styles that have played in the world of Leatherface and his family have given audiences somewhat diverse takes on what makes the franchise scary and / or entertaining. The latest to take a crack at it, director David Blue Garcia (Tejano), just so happens to be a Texas native, and with a story from Fede Alvarez & Rodo Sayagues (2013’s Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) and a screenplay by Chris Thomas Devlin, the new film gives the series a modern makeover.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre wipes the slate clean of the franchise’s convoluted timelines and acts as a direct sequel to Hooper’s original. John Larroquette narrates the opening once again, reminding us of the infamous summer of ‘73 as the story plays clips from the first film. The story of Sally Hardesty and the murder of her friends has come back into the public eye in the age of true crime podcasts and Netflix series, and so its popularity is quickly capitalized on. Tasteless merchandise is sold and the tiny decaying town of Harlow, Texas, where the original massacre took place, is forced to rely on tourism to stay alive.
This leads a small group of young entrepreneurs from San Francisco to arrive with plans to rejuvenate the place, seemingly looking to attract influencers and other tourists. Melody (Sarah Yarkin), Dante (Jacob Latimore) and Ruth (Nell Hudson) have bought up a good chunk of property in the middle of town. Included in that is the local orphanage. Luckily, the only resident is the old woman who’s run it her entire life, Mrs. Mc (Alice Krige). She’s promptly given the boot, leading to a fast and deadly sequence of events that throw Melody, her friends, and her younger sister Lila (Elsie Fisher) that she dragged along, into the path of the town’s fabled masked killer, Leatherface (Mark Burnham).
The film initially has a lot going for it. Its setup is far more engaging than most, touching on topics of gentrification, American culture’s ongoing fixation with true tales of vicious crimes, small town conservatism, gun violence and more. Hooper’s original film has no shortage of thematic analyses dedicated to it, so the idea to push modern social issues to the forefront is a welcome change for a franchise that’s largely been dedicated to gory, empty carnage in the years since. The new film also serves up some classic legacy sequel goodness by bringing back Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré, taking over for the late Marilyn Burns) Halloween-style; as an older, toughened survivalist with a drive for vengeance.
Sadly, almost all of the film’s interesting aspects fall to the wayside as the film quickly commences with the usual hacking and slashing before it even reaches the halfway point. Any chances of captivating characters or even a well-rounded plot go out the window. None of the good ideas ever feel properly followed through with and characters are killed off before they have enough time to really become much of anything. The cast has charisma, especially Latimore, and both Yarkin and Fisher are no strangers to the horror genre. But their relationships to one another never manifest in any meaningful way, so any sort of emotion feels frustratingly distant.
The result is a mostly underwhelming movie that’s able to introduce strong themes and plot threads but unable to take them anywhere worthwhile. Whatever it is exactly that Melody and company want to do with Harlow is incredibly vague, the town itself appears to have about four residents total, characters mention the heat but it never feels tangible, and the film’s own concept of an older Leatherface that’s been in hiding for decades isn’t approached in any interesting way.
In fact, Texas Chainsaw Massacre trims away much of what makes its flagship slasher villain so uniquely disconcerting and terrifying. Gone are his wild, manic movements and disturbing screams and howls. Instead, the face-wearing killer is just another lumbering, seemingly immortal slasher monster who does little else besides grunt and murder, no different than a Michael Myers or a Jason Vorhees. Even the cannibal and family elements of the franchise are seemingly abandoned with nothing inventive to take their place.
Still, that initial setup is at least far more intriguing than most of the other films in the franchise, and director David Blue Garcia, alongside cinematographer Ricardo Diaz, is able to deliver a couple of inspired and brilliantly executed sequences that stand out from the rest of the Texas Chainsaw pack. An early scene that takes place in a dried out sunflower field offers both creative camera work and memorable visuals that build up a top-notch sense of dread and tension. It’s a classic horror sequence where you know that something awful is clearly about to happen, but it’s impossible to know exactly when. Another commendable scene comes later on in a crowded party bus, where the film finally allows itself to let loose and unleashes a level of sadistic glee that is very much in the spirit of Hooper’s films.
In that same vein, there’s also a very admirable ‘no-fucks-given’ attitude in the finale of this latest Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s an ending that could’ve at least helped things end on a bold note, but alas, it’s almost undermined entirely by the film’s very final moment. C’est la vie. Fans of this uniquely (and sometimes delightfully) appalling franchise probably won’t regret giving this one a watch if they’re looking for a few moments of inspired butchery, but anything more is still regrettably out of reach.
‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ is now streaming on Netflix. Check out where we rank this latest entry in the franchise against all of the others.
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