The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: A treat for gore and culture war lovers
David Blue Garcia’s Netflix film is the ninth installment in the series of films featuring the deranged killer Leatherface
David Blue Garcia's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, streaming on Netflix, is the ninth film in the series featuring Leatherface, an insane killer who uses a chainsaw to decapitate his victims and wears their faces as masks.
Garcia's film shares its title with the first film of the series, the 1974 horror classic directed by Tobe Hooper, as well as the 2003 remake of the same name. The 2022 film will appeal to, I presume, two kinds of audience members.
Firstly, gore lovers. And then the type which enjoys cultural commentary of the kind you see in HBO's Succession. Being a gorehound with an active interest in the culture wars, I enjoyed Garcia's reboot. It might also appeal to an entirely new Gen-Z demographic who had previously not seen any of the Leatherface movies. But I'm not too sure. Garcia's film doesn't really portray them as paragons of virtue. They come off as smug, self-righteous, stupid.
So, whether The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022 works is entirely a matter of one's values and taste in films and politics.This is a warning before you read further.
The plot: Four youths make their way to the Texas town of Harlow, the kind of back-of-beyond place where you'll find cannibalistic, unsophisticated killer-types looking for city-slickers to trap and torture.
Dante (Jacob Latimore), a chef, and Melody (Sarah Yarkin), his professional partner, are social media influencers. (You are already hating them, aren't you?) Dante has a girlfriend, Ruth (Nell Hudson). The most interesting of the lot is Melody's sister Lila, played by Elsie Fisher, who was heartbreakingly awesome in Bo Burnham's 2018 film Eighth Grade. Lila is a survivor of a school shooting. Therefore, she is mostly quiet and doesn't feel the need to talk much and annoy the viewer.
Their mission is to buy and sell off Harlow to gentrify it as a paradise for young creators and professionals. Is it a good idea? Lila points out that it's miles away from the city. But nobody's in a mood to listen to her. The cultural commentary, as I mentioned earlier, is one of the reasons I enjoyed the movie. Just an example: Dante, who is Black, spots a Confederate flag dangling from a building they need to sell. Instead of expressing anguish or hurt, he is concerned about how this would look to his woke "investors" who are about to move in in a few hours to survey the place.
The townsfolk naturally feel an animosity towards Dante and co., but they want to just have the money and move on. Macho mechanic Richter (Moe Dunford) quietly tolerates these characters. He carries a gun at all times, listens to heavy metal, and is a man who does physical labour for a living. Naturally, Melody finds this Toxic Masculinity 101. When Richter and Melody's sister Lila just about begin to forge an unlikely friendship, Leatherface enters the picture. He wreaks havoc on the group and their yuppie friends and colleagues. It's fun to watch.
Where did Leatherface come from? Watch the film to find out. Also returning is Sally Hardesty, the sole survivor from Hooper's first film, in which she played the protagonist. Since then, Sally has occasionally appeared as a minor character in the series. This is the first time since 1974 that Sally has a major role. (Garcia's film retcons the series; for example, Sally was revealed to be dead in a 1990 installment). In Hooper's film, Sally (Marilyn Burns) was delicate and easily terrified. 50 years later, Sally, now played by Olwen Fouéré, is a hardened ranger, who has vowed to kill Leatherface and avenge the death of her friends. Delicious action awaits.
Garcia understands that the MVP of these films is Leatherface. The screenplay by Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues gives him a bunch of good scenes. Halfway into the film, there's a particularly great one, which has Leatherface finding his iconic chainsaw after breaking down a wall. The writers and the filmmaker understand the legendary status of this monster, and they do right by him. Álvarez and Sayagues' strengths are a natural fit for this series. They had earlier collaborated on Don't Breathe (2016), a great horror-thriller about young people invading a house which turns out to be hell on earth.
Hooper's film will, of course, always remain the best because Hooper took the premise very seriously. What if, indeed, people like myself and this review's readers do end up in a remote village or town and encounter a crazy, cannibalistic family? The 1974 film was brutal, minimalist and unsentimental. The horror was communicated without frills.
However, Hooper upended the entire tone of the first film in the 1986 sequel, which unfolds like an ironic dark comedy. Since then, the series has struggled to return to its origins. Garcia's film strikes an almost even balance between the seriousness of Hooper's original and the irony and self-awareness naturally present in the material. The final shot was hilarious. Once again, there's a screaming female survivor looking back at Leatherface as she escapes, but this time she is in a self-driving car.
