Review: ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ is High on Gore, Low on Substance

texas chainsaw massacre sequel netflix
Netflix

Netflix has teamed with filmmaker David Blue Garcia to release Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a new entry in the beloved slasher franchise created by Tobe Hooper back in 1974. The new film, which negates all of the previous sequels, is written by Fede Álvarez (Evil Dead 2013, Don’t Breathe), Rodo Sayagues, and Chris Thomas Devlin. The film stars Sarah Yarkin (Happy Death Day 2U), Elsie Fisher (Despicable Me), Jacob Latimore (Detroit), Mark Burnham as Leatherface, and Olwen Fouéré (Mandy) as the original film’s final girl, Sally Hardesty.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre picks up nearly 50 years after the events of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) by following a group of young entrepreneurs as they arrive in the small, mostly abandoned town of Harlow, TX, in hopes to auction off its buildings and create a trendy new vacation spot. Melody (Yarkin) and Dante (Latimore) are in charge of persuading an arriving group of investors. However, upon entering one of the buildings, they find an elderly woman convinced she still owns the house. The two have the woman removed from the house, which results in a heart attack. She’s rushed to the hospital but dies en route with her son at her side. Little does the group know, they’ve now woken a murderous psychopath responsible for previous chainsaw slayings in the area.

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Starting with the good, this film is the most visually brutal and gory of the entire franchise. With Fede Álvarez involved, who was responsible for an entire scene of raining blood in 2013’s Evil Dead, we knew we were going to get a bloody good time. There were multiple times when I audibly yelled “oooooooh” when seeing a limb broken the wrong way or bones being slowly sawed in half. A heavy portion of the gore was CG-based, but masking and blending it with practical effects was well-handled. Leatherface has always been the most brutally vicious of the slashers, and this film did him justice well.

While the film doesn’t establish the relatable “final” character the audience typically gets to connect with in slashers, it does a good job creating slasher fodder within its supporting cast. Many of the characters were overly rude and intrusive, and the film highlighted the extremist side of more liberal ideas, focusing mainly on the consequences of gentrification in poor areas. The messaging reminded me of The Hunt, which I didn’t mind, but sometimes throwing characters into the most extreme versions of their ideas makes for silly storytelling. Regardless, I didn’t care about them and was happy to see them go.

Going back to the “final” character idea, the film is lacking there. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise has excellent protagonists played by Marilyn Burns, Caroline Williams, and Jessica Biel. It was disappointing to get no real connection to the final characters. Melody’s sister, Lila (Fisher), was as close as we got to backstory and someone we could root for, but she had the least amount of screen time.

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I like the idea of the “50 years later” story. People can complain and compare all they want to David Gordon Green’s Halloween franchise, but a sequel is a sequel, and using a real amount of time passing is just as usable as any other reason for a sequel.

I also liked the idea of Sally Hardesty returning to the story to get some much-needed resolution to such a traumatic situation that still haunts her five decades later. Unfortunately, almost zero backstory was included for her character’s return. In Halloween, Laurie Strode still lives in Haddonfield. She still knows and connects with everyone in the film. Aside from seeing her mentally struggle, her connections with others, including her own family, do a great job in developing an older version of her character.

In Sally’s case, we get nothing. She’s an older woman out for revenge, and somehow, she was also a Texas Ranger. Her showdown with Leatherface is quick, anti-climactic, and added almost nothing to an already low-substance storyline. Her character’s inclusion felt forced and rushed, like a cheap tactic to connect us more to Tobe Hooper’s classic film without doing the story work to bring us back there mentally. I would have preferred putting that time into the characters already established solely for this film.

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Overall, I wasn’t incredibly disappointed, as I went into it thinking that even if it were just okay, it would still be better than a good portion of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequels out there. I would put this entry right in the middle of the pack. The film felt like one of the Friday the 13th sequels that came toward the end of the franchise, like Jason Takes Manhattan or Jason X.

I thought Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a fine entry and maybe on the road to something good. It’s fair for slasher fans to love it. Many people we don’t care about get chopped up by one of the biggest horror baddies. It doesn’t get a lot better for some horror fans than that. My issues come with the film not just embracing that aspect and trying to shoehorn in weird messaging and cheap franchise-story tactics to pump up the fans. I’m all for fan service, but it has to be done right or not at all.


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Texas Chainsaw Massacre
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Stephen Rosenberg
Stephen is a massive horror, sci-fi, fantasy and action movie geek. He's an avid horror & sci-fi book/comic reader, musician and podcaster. He co-founded and co-hosts Motion Picture Meltdown (movie-roasting podcast since 2009), which is part of the United Cypher Podcast Network. Stephen is the Editor-at-Large for Horror Geek Life and an Associate Editor and contributing writer for MovieWeb. Feel free to contact him regarding screeners, reviews, press kits, interviews, and more!
texas-chainsaw-massacre-reviewTexas Chainsaw Massacre is the goriest entry into the franchise, offering some of the series’ best kills. Both CG and practical effects were used and blended well to make the kill scenes effective. The characters felt like extremes in their ideas and meant nothing more than slasher fodder. Unfortunately, I’m a huge fan of the developed “final” character, and we do not get that here. The idea for the sequel was strong, but the inclusion of a character from the original film didn’t flow smoothly and felt like a cheap, ineffective tactic to connect fans to the original. Some horror fans will love it, and I thought the film was okay but probably won’t revisit it any time soon.

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