Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Tobe Hooper's original Texas Chain Saw Massacre is certainly not a flawless movie. It doesn't even spell “chainsaw” correctly! But what that motley crew of ...

That elusive quality lives somewhere between the grisliness of a seeming snuff film and the inexplicable beauty of Leatherface swinging his chainsaw in the morning sun like it’s his lover. It’s a desperate and crude grasp at something approaching relevancy that ultimately has no more value than shamelessly juxtaposing memories of real life massacres inside a high school with the movie’s own giddy slaughter as Leatherface butchers a bus full of kidz these days caricatures in a sequence that is clearly meant to elicit high fives from the audience. Indeed, the only hint of a character arc in the piece pivots on Fisher’s Lila being revealed to be the survivor of a school shooting. By returning the first victim who got away to him, Netflix’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre reminds the viewer that we’re watching a geriatric serial killer chasing down victims who could be his grandkids. As originally played by Gunnar Hansen in the ’74 film, there is a perverse element of dark comedy and even tragedy about Leatherface, a mama’s boy who is playing the role of mama for his family full of cannibals. The inclusion of Sally, and the frankly dubious development of her being both a gunslinger and so obsessed with Leatherface that she even bought the old farmhouse she almost died in five decades ago, is a poor attempt to mimic the success David Gordon Green and Blumhouse Pictures enjoyed by bringing Jamie Lee Curtis back for the 2018 Halloween reboot.

An effectively gnarly Netflix follow-up to the 1974 original has Gen Zs trying to turf the bloodthirsty southern killer out of a derelict town.

It has never been a series steeped in particularly complex mythology – a silent lug kills and cuts up outsiders while wearing a mask made of human skin – but the exhausting attempts to resurrect and retell have expanded and confused the universe to a point of exasperated weariness. It’s as remarkably stupid as it sounds and the ebulliently vile, shockingly staged carnage that follows feels tailor-made for eye-rolling older viewers, even if some original fans might find the brief lapse into absurdist comedy a little jarring. Following in the sluggish footsteps of Michael Myers, who stabbed his way back to relevance in 2018 after we were insisted upon to ignore the mostly heinous Halloween sequels (H20 remains an underrated bright spot) and allow for a clean slate, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series is going down a similar retcon route.

David Blue Garcia's Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) is finally upon us. And the best part is that it's waiting for you over on your Netflix account right now!

Mark Burnham in 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre.' Yana Blajeva / Legendary/Netflix. There's a very important message embedded in this brand new, fresh-off-the-chopping ...

For the love of Leatherface, leave this massacre alone once and for all. It’s not that you should always keep a chainsaw hidden in your bedroom wall, should you potentially need to use it on some pesky twentysomethings in the near future. Stop draining the canon for every ounce of Caro syrup that it’s worth. Stop slapping “a new beginning” or “the next generation” after the title — every era of teenagers may deserve to get their own encounters with hall-of-fame screen killers, but simply using fresh blood as a fresh coat of paint on a vintage title without adding anything to the proceedings is unimaginative. It’s not that hipsters should ixnay gentrifying ghost towns in the dustier corners of the Lone Star state, even if one of them is a celebrity chef and their idea of revitalizing a long-abandoned main street with a hoity-toity bistro will attract tourists. There’s a very important message embedded in this brand new, fresh-off-the-chopping-block version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and it’s one that should be carved crudely in stone with whatever sharp instrument you have on hand, mechanized or otherwise.

The Netflix slasher joins an unfortunate trend in horror: “legacy sequels” that fail to capture what made the classics so special.

Of course, the franchise’s legacy will remain basically unchanged by this latest flop; soon enough, surely, some other attempt will spring up to bring back Leatherface. But each effort only adds to the original’s mystique: As simple as its thrills might seem, they can’t be replicated. They’re Austin transplants traveling to a small town in Texas to claim a derelict property as part of some gentrification scheme. Leatherface, played by Mark Burnham here, is supposed to be the same character as in the first film, only decades older. While Green’s film largely succeeded on all those fronts, becoming a smash hit, Garcia’s feels unnecessary and anonymous, leaning on crass visual shocks while failing to match the unsparing brutality of its lodestar. If it makes the kind of unforgettable impact that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre did, the follow-ups will never end. Of course, if a horror film is even a mild success, it cannot be left to stand alone; eventually a sequel will follow, even if it’s direct-to-video schlock.

Once again, there's a sequel that skips all the previous films and remakes but the first movie, and it's designed to center the story of a survivor. In this ...

Worst of all is how forgettable Sally’s arc becomes, a half-assed version of the Laurie Strode vengeance narrative from Green’s “Halloween” movie. The idea of city folk who don’t understand what waits for them when they leave the safety of their home is common in horror and was partially defined by Hooper’s film, but this one adds nothing new. It’s clear as day that the producers of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” saw David Gordon Green’s 2018 reboot of “Halloween” and thought they could accomplish the same kind of comeback for Leatherface. Once again, there’s a sequel that skips all the previous films and remakes but the first movie, and it’s designed to center the story of a survivor. It turns out that she’s the Norma Bates of this situation, and when she’s forced from her home, her son Leatherface ( Mark Burnham) goes on a rampage. (I’m not kidding.) Melody ( Sarah Yarkin), her sister Lila ( Elsie Fisher), and their friend Dante ( Jacob Latimore) have come to the middle of nowhere in Harlow, Texas to renovate the small town. Everything about David Blue Garcia’s film is “sorta just barely” (other than the gore, which is impressive). It’s one of those projects that’s clearly been through the wringer in terms of production—there were stories of a replaced directing team and horrible test screenings—and yet it feels like it was doomed from the beginning.