Texas Chainsaw Massacre Review

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is available on the streaming service.

It would take a college semester to tell those who aren't Leatherface superfans how we got to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The ninth one in the southern slaughterhouse franchise, by David Blue Garcia, retcons everything except the 1974 original, so don't worry about Matthew McConaughey andAlexandra Daddario tripping over the short fence. The producers and the story creators of the Evil Dead sequel boast proper credentials after their success. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a clean restart for a franchise with legendary whiffs, but it isn't even better than some of the sequels it dares to erase.

After 50 years of peaceful dormancy, Leatherface is provoked by the post-millennial cast, including the Instafamous Melody (Sarah Yarkin) and her sister Lila (Elsie Fisher). Most chainsaw massacres end with victims being shuttled to the middle of rural nowhere to meet Leatherface's blade. Dante, a social media chef, chartering a pimped-out bus full of investors to Harlow in hopes of gentrifying the dust bowl ghost town in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Despite a few townsfolk flying their Confederate flags and holstering handguns, outsiders Melody and Lila eventually lead the show, a brutal display of violence at the expense of a script that is all gristle, no meat.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is available.

If you like your slashers covered in gory blood from weapon wounds, Texas Chainsaw Massacre might be enough. It will never win the judge's prize like Drayton Sawyer at a chili cookoff, but will be remembered for its highlight reel. Leatherface punishes new-age gentrifiers who hide behind moral creeds to take over impoverished towns and hammers shin bones into right angles. Leatherface comes off as a Boomer who fights back with ill-conceived notes of sympathy, but as far as kills are considered, the movie titled "Massacre" holds its promise.

A single bus sequence with casualties galore could stand as the year's most exquisitely vile display of slasher fatalities, with all respects paid towards the special effects teams.

Chris Thomas Devlin's script leaves a lot to be desired. Characters don't demand investment or their journeys don't demand investment. The conversation around gun violence begins with a haunting bullet scar, only to meet the most ignorant people later. Sally Hardesty was brought back as a Laurie Strode type hellbent on killing Leatherface, which was mishandled. Texas Chainsaw Massacre doesn't seem to know what it wants to say about gun violence, generational divides, or any other of the story's many, which makes the two subplots feel shoehorned with advancement on the fly.

Excuses only earn passes when narratives are involved.

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The design of the production recalls better Texas Chainsaw movies. The abandoned town of Harlow feels isolated and claustrophobic, while the Hunter-killer terror unfolds under sunshine strong enough to toast sunflower fields. Other elements of the franchise feel like a middle finger to the legacy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Leatherface is a much more interesting character when he is following orders from psychopaths, not operating as just another masked brute. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation gets right about the psychological horrors of each film atop butcher's shop carnage.

The performance of Leatherface requires a lot of physical force, less vocal in the later years. Leatherface can still wield the chainsaw in a circular manner, but he has nothing to do with it outside of his running and running feet. He is meant to chase Generation Z cancelers who quote culture and spread their utopian rebrand like a cult, leading to a few choice sequence, like when Sarah Yarkin's Melody sees the chainsaw blade coming at her through wooden. The fear on Yarkin and Elsie Fisher's faces translate when staring down a lumbering horror icon, it's just their characters aren't written past traceable outlines. It is a shame because splatterhouse goodness feels wasted by an experience that is too focused on making audiences feel violated and miserable. I have watched enough horror movies to know you can do that and still tell a great tale.