Netflix’s New Texas Chainsaw Massacre Is Completely Unnecessary

Tobe Hooper’s 1974 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a horror masterpiece—a grotesque, chilling exploration of why you shouldn’t poke round different folks’s property, particularly in rural Texas. It’s a narrative different filmmakers haven’t been in a position to withstand revisiting, with diminishing returns. The newest instance of this hits Netflix at this time.

Directed by David Blue Garcia from a script by Chris Thomas Devlin—and a narrative by co-producers Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues, who made Don’t Breathe and the 2013 Evil Dead remake—Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which follows the latest development of simply naming one’s sequel/reboot after the unique property (see: Halloween, Candyman, Scream), posits itself as a direct sequel to the 1974 movie. That might be taken as an insult to Hooper’s horror comedy traditional Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 till you notice this 2022 take is an equal-opportunity insult machine. Nobody is protected: small-town Texans, metropolis slickers with gentrification on their minds and greenback indicators of their eyes, school-shooting victims, one of many collection’ most necessary legacy characters, and most of all of the viewers, significantly followers of Hooper’s movies. Only Leatherface, the chainsaw-swinging villain performed right here by Mark Burnham, escapes along with his dignity (largely) intact.

The set-up is a minimum of considerably novel. Business companions Melody (Sarah Yarkin) and Dante (Jacob Latimore), together with Dante’s girlfriend Ruth (Nell Hudson) and Melody’s sister Lila (Castle Rock’s Elsie Fisher), head to the abandoned city of Harlow, Texas, the spot they’ve chosen to create a hip utopia for artists and social-media influencers. Many issues about this plan don’t make quite a lot of sense, however within the identify of plot battle, the quartet pulls into Harlow—the place they’ve staked their futures on—for what’s apparently the very first time simply forward of a bus full of their potential buyers. They’re aghast to comprehend that one of many city’s most distinguished buildings, an previous orphanage with a tattered Confederate flag on its façade, remains to be occupied by an aged lady (Star Trek: First Contact’s Alice Krige) who’s been there for many years, with one of many “children” nonetheless below her care.

Who this orphan occurs to be is not any secret, although since Texas Chainsaw Massacre doesn’t belief its viewers in any way to determine that out, we get a number of lingering pictures of a bunch {photograph} exhibiting a hulking determine with an obscured face standing on the rear. Could or not it’s the character closely foreshadowed within the movie’s prologue and opening scenes… and the one character anybody is watching this film to see, a sure Leatherface? Fans of the unique movie will see the yawning plot gap right here, which is that within the 1974 movie, Leatherface was already an grownup residing along with his (let’s name them eccentric) household of their farmhouse, one thing the 2022 movie explicitly reminds us of. So did he transfer into the orphanage after the unique bloodbath and, like, hang around with Alice Krige’s character for 48 years, someway escaping detection and squelching the urge to slaughter folks with the chainsaw he’s stored tucked right into a particular hiding place all this time?

This data stays elusive, however there’s not a lot else left to the creativeness in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Nobody would name the unique movie “subtle”—it’s a film the place folks embellish their residence with human physique components, and different folks get held on meat hooks and bashed within the head with hammers—nevertheless it had nuance when it got here to setting the scene and pacing its startling plot turns. There’s an aura of menace, a way that the unique victims are blundering into a nasty place however are too self-absorbed to comprehend it. The new movie’s characters are additionally self-absorbed (and self-righteous, and incapable of creating logical choices), however the film goes one additional and makes them immediately detestable caricatures. You need Leatherface to make barbecue out of those disposable assholes, which is probably the purpose, aside from the 2 individuals who’re alleged to be sympathetic: Lila, whose whole characterization is “she endured a school shooting” (full with flashbacks, essentially the most self-serious side of a film that’s already approach too self-serious), and Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré, taking on for the late Marilyn Burns), the only real survivor of the 1974 movie.

The inclusion of Sally—who’s launched in a scene the place she’s carving up a large piece of meat, and has apparently been plotting payback for practically 50 years—units her as much as be the Laurie Strode of this film, or a minimum of the equal of Dennis Hopper in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. But as cool as it’s to convey her again, it’s additionally supremely irritating that she doesn’t get to do extra, and that we don’t get to be taught extra about her. It seems like a wasted alternative.

Instead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre has loads of time to indicate Leatherface barging onto a bus full of individuals whose first intuition is to start out livestreaming his entrance (since we will see their screens, we’re aware about snarky feedback like “That looks so fake!”), which leads into the goriest scene within the film, which can be the most effective scene by default, just because it’s the one memorable one.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre is streaming on Netflix now.

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