Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
- 2.5/5 Cameras 🎥🎥.5
- Directed by: David Blue Garcia
- Starring: Sarah Yarkin, Elsie Fisher, Mark Burnham, et al
- Where to find it: Netflix
 |
| No Copyright Infringement Intended |
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) is a horror classic.
Often seen as one of the original slashers, its dirty, video nasty look,
coupled with an unsettling and shocking (certainly for the time) concept led to
a film that still holds up today as an intense watch despite a, at least in my
opinion, fairly weak final 20 minutes. Over the years there have been a million
sequels, remakes, rip-offs, and the like, but none have really lived up to the
original, misfiring when trying to hit the tone and feel that made the original
such an unsettling watch. Has someone finally managed it? Not by a long shot.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the lack of the “the” makes all the
difference here) follows a group of rich 20-somethings headed by Melody (Sarah
Yarkin) and Dante (Jacob Latimore) who have bought a ghost town in Texas with
the intention of turning it into a paradise for other rich 20-somethings. Upon
arrival, they find the only locals who’ve stuck around are a gun-toting mechanic
and an old lady who runs an orphanage to which the only other resident is a
large, mysterious, and seemingly mute man she looks after. When the new
arrivals attempt to kick out the elderly lady the stress causes her to have a
heart attack and she is rushed off to hospital by the area sheriff’s department
alongside a concerned individual from the group and the mysterious mute. She
flatlines on the way and the mute snaps, revealing himself to be Leatherface
from the original by killing the people in the car, slicing off their faces,
and returning to the town for the rest.
Honestly, there’s very little more to the plot than that. We
get the return of Sally, the sole survivor of the original film (played by
Olwen Fouréré
as original actress Marylin Burns died in 2014) as a Texas ranger in an obvious
rip-off/potential parody of the far superior 2018 Halloween film, but that’s
it. There’s no explanation for how and why Leatherface was in an orphanage, who
the woman looking after him was in relation to him, how Sally, who apparently
has spent the last 50 years looking for him failed to track him down for so
long or what’s happened to the rest of the Sawyer family; a great strength of
the original is how Leatherface is portrayed almost sympathetically, with the
rest of the family taking advantage of him and abusing him due to him being
disabled but since he’s the only villain here he’s presented as being vicious,
free-thinking and capable of planning ahead and laying traps in a way that
counteracts how the character is really supposed to act. Another issue is how
the majority of the protagonists are either so shallow you don’t form an
opinion or down-right unlikeable for the most part. Why would I want to root
for an Instagram influencer ready to kick an old woman on the street? This
severely limits the film’s ability to build tension; if I don’t care if they
survive, the stalking scenes don’t have any tension to them.
Still, I’m not going to lie, I quite enjoyed this film for
what it was; a crap, trashy c-tier slasher with an a-tier budget and production
values. This isn’t a movie to watch to be scared, it’s a movie to watch if you
want to see a load of annoying fictional influencers get hacked apart. The gore
is good quality, and the death scenes are fun, and honestly, if the directors
had approached the whole thing with a little more of a nod and a wink to its
ridiculousness it could have been a decent horror-comedy. As it is, for the
right kind of person going in with the right kind of mindset you can still get
a kick out of this, and if you’ve already got a Netflix subscription it’s not
like it’s costing you anything. Sure, it’s way off from the original which
relies more on unsettling performances and settings for its horror (it’s
surprisingly light on gore given its title and reputation) but that’s a method
that takes a bit more nuance than anyone was looking to try for here. Check it
out if you enjoy utterly mindless slasher violence, otherwise, steer as clear
as you can.
Comments
Post a Comment