Directed By David Blue Garcia

Starring – Olwen Fouere, Alice Krige, John Larroquette

The Plot – The spiritual sequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise takes place 47 years later. Ruth (Nell Hudson) is a 25-year old San Francisco moneymaker who drags her younger teenage sister (Elsie Fisher) with her to Texas on a business trip, out of fear of leaving her alone in the city. The younger sister Lila is an amateur photographer who is wheelchair-bound and it’s not long until they’re fighting for their lives against a 60 year old Leatherface (Mark Burnham).

Rated R for strong bloody horror violence and gore, and adult language

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE | Official Trailer | Netflix – YouTube

POSITIVES

Everything on a beneficial level in the film stems entirely from a visual capacity. Whether in the visceral fury of carnage candy with the most gruesomely creative kills of the entire franchise, or Garcia’s own touch of artistic flare on the ingredients of the environment, this film is at least an intriguing one to continuously look at, giving it an originality in presentation that at least challenges convention on what is to be expected after eight films in this trivial franchise. On the detailing of those attributes, the iconography of Leatherface’s depiction not only gives him an almost mythical statuesque imposition on the way he influences the tonal capacities upon every scene and sequence, but also one made meaningful in the use of depraved shadows, weathered backdrops, and endless cottonfields, to which he blends into seamlessly to outline the character’s expansive reach on the geographical distinction. Aside from this, the barebones 78-minute run time is a fitting tribute to the brief-but-impactful 1973 original, in that it wastes little time setting the pace for the duration of this brutal investment and keeps the stakes and circumstances continuously evolving with each passing instance that plays capably towards Leatherface’s highly impactful home field advantage.

NEGATIVES

Story deserves first mention here, as the gentrification of a town full of derelicts is not only detestably toxic towards its group of so-called protagonists driving this objective, but also points out the idiocy of a group of young adults purchasing a town with no infrastructure or location to reach prominence in the dream they sacrifice their lives so fruitfully for. These aspects alone wipe away any of the stakes or audience interest in their dynamics, only adding to the complete lack of characterization or growth between them that never transitions any of them from the strangers we’re saddled with from the film’s cringing introduction, and only enhances their incompetence with instances of braindead intention that only serve as convenience for Leatherface to put an end to their mental miseries. Speaking of cringing, the surface level social commentary that hangs over this film like a wet sock is about as pointless and unnecessary as it is dated from the heavy-handed emphasis of producers pushing it forward from beyond the lens. This pertains to hollow lines of dialogue, like “Make a move and you’re going to be cancelled” or “Does a man need a gun to compensate for his inferior merchandise between the legs?”, the latter of which mumbled by anti-gun enthusiasts who later hypocritically use a gun to free themselves from the clutches of their saw-wielding antagonist. As for Leatherface, it’s a bit difficult to believe that this is the same Gunnar Hansen version of the man-child character, not just because fifty years hasn’t slowed down the character or made him any weaker, but also because he has apparently sprouted the kind of intelligence necessary to set traps for his opposition that they’ll fall right into, time and time again. This would be forgivable if any of the protagonists gave even a minimally substantial performance to enhance their peril, but this cast falls as flat as a firework display ten years after its expiration date. It also borrows (Kind word) from “Halloween 2018”, in that it brings back original protagonist Sally Hardesty to finally conquer her demons, fifty years later. The problem in this instance is that not only is Hardesty in the movie for maybe a total of ten minutes, but her arc has you scratching your head for why she was even included in the first place, with a manipulative plot device on the audience being the only intention I can possibly summon. Finally, though just a personal preference for yours truly, I can say the use of C.G blood and revealing gore on otherwise perfect abundances of kills, left a sour taste in my mouth, made worse by the obviousness of their depictions. This isn’t top notch C.G in the slightest, instead looking like ground floor effects work whose limbs or hanging flesh not only don’t move with the influence of the character movements, but also squirt blood with cartoonish emphasis behind their consistency. Because the Texas Chainsaw franchise revels in the simplicity of its concepts, especially as the case in the 73′ original, this installment and its usage of artificiality limits the believability and the connective tissue of what’s intentioned, emitting much of the fifty-year distancing between films, but for all of the wrong reasons creatively.

OVERALL

“Texas Chainsaw Massacre fails to redefine Leatherface’s legacy any better than a majority of the mediocre sequels and remakes it erases from the continuity of its imbalanced history. Those who value horror movies purely for stomach-churning gore might find enough to cherish about this brutally vulgar installment, but for my money it’s all guts, no glory for this franchise that is continuously running on empty.

My Grade: 3/10 or F+