‘Say my name…’
Horror reboots are all the rage right now. Due to the Marvelification of cinema, horror is one of the main outlets for creativity that Hollywood still has left. That’s not to say that they aren’t against revisiting previously successful franchises, heck, that’s what horror movies are all about. Following the huge success of the Halloween reboot, we have seen Scream and Candyman brought back with varying degrees of success with a Hellraiser reboot on the horizon too. Not to mention Saw, Wrong Turn and Child’s Play. The difference with the Texas Chainsaw movies is that they have already been rebooted before… twice.
Indeed, ol’ Leatherface weaves a tangled web. This film, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022), is a direct sequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and shouldn’t be confused with either The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) or indeed Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013). Nor does it have any connection to Leatherface (2017). Who’d have thought a movie about a guy murdering people with a chainsaw could be so complicated?
Fifty years on from the events of the first movie, a group of idealistic young adults decide to buy up the entire town of Harlow, Texas because… well, this is never really clear. So they can open a restaurant? Anyway, it’s not important. What is important is that Leatherface (Mark Burnham) is still knocking around, and he’s still a homicidal maniac. Everything else is just details.
Contrary to popular belief, there actually isn’t much chainsaw massacring in the first movie. Well, Leatherface more than makes up for that here. At a skinny 82 minutes, director David Blue Garcia packs in plenty of chainsaw action, certainly enough to keep the fans happy. Burnham makes for a physically imposing and intimidating antagonist, and while the main cast are ultimately forgettable, this has often been the way throughout this franchise. There has never been a final girl for Leatherface, and Garcia’s attempts to create one here is this movie’s major misstep. Sure, Sally Hardesty is credited with being one of the original Final Girls following her dramatic escape in the source material, but not only has she never darkened Leatherface’s door again in any of the subsequent sequels, but original actress Marilyn Burns also sadly passed away in 2014. In her place, we are presented with Olwen Fouéré bringing the character back as a Laurie Strode-esque vigilante out for revenge. This unearned return is both distracting and superfluous, and if not for this, the whole film would have been much more successful. As with many other plot points (one character’s involvement in a school shooting is mentioned numerous times with no resolution), the return of Sally is handled badly, and it invites unflattering comparisons to the Halloween reboot.
That being said, the Texas Chainsaw movies have always been more visceral than their contemporaries. The story isn’t important here, not really. And in terms of visual spectacle, this is easily the most successful entry since the source material. One jaw-dropping sequence on a party bus is spectacular (despite being almost ruined by the corny one liner that precedes it) and the final nightmarish sequence also stands up to scrutiny.
Ultimately, in comparison to the original, obviously this film is nowhere near, but in the context of both this franchise and horror sequels generally, Garcia’s reboot must go down as a success. Bring on the sequel.