Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

 

Wow, this movie was pretty bad. Though, I would like to take a moment to discuss the production history, which was a mess from the start. But first, I want to talk about Leatherface, the 2017 prequel to both the original 1974 film and Texas Chainsaw 3D, which is another unnecessary "prequel" that came out back in 2013. Let me say this off the bat. I never saw this film and I don't attend to. The only clips I saw of this film were through movie reviews on YouTube. It seems like a run-of-the-mill cash-grab and, overall, pointless prequel. But the real meat of it was Lionsgate was planning on making FIVE films in this dried-up franchise after the release of Leatherface. Are you kidding me? What more can you do with a chainsaw-wielding maniac? Did they want Leatherface to become some sort of superhuman, somehow? Thankfully, due to the poor timing when it was released, Lionsgate's scrapped the five movies. 

With Fede Alvarez (the director of Don't Breathe and The Evil Dead Remake) and...Kim Henkel. May I remind you that Kim Henkel wrote The Next Generation. So how would expect this one would turn out? And then comes first-time screenwriter Chris Thomas Delvin and after that, Ryan and Andy Tohill as the directors. But somehow, the Tohill brothers mysteriously stepped out. Creative differences, I suppose? So that's when cinematographer David Blue Garcia stepped in as a replacement. Just like the last movie, this is mostly filmed in Bulgaria. They couldn't afford to film this in Texas? Really?

Was this movie worth saving? Fuck, no. The test screening was so bad that they decided to dump this on the Netflix bargain bin. And rightfully so.

This overall movie just has a cheap feel to it. Sure, it's shot nicely in some parts and the cinematography is well done but other than that, this is still a terribly-made film. I can see why certain people can enjoy this. It's a dumb, goofy, gory slasher that friends could enjoy on a Saturday night but as a Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel, it fails miserably. 

The plot itself is completely asinine:

When a group of narcissistic social media influencers gentrify a small town in Texas, they unknowingly evict the owner of an orphanage who turns out to be the foster mother of none other than Leatherface himself. When the woman falls into cardiac arrest and dies on the way to the hospital, Leatherface is thirsting for revenge. Little does he know, someone from the past is preparing for a final showdown. 

Okay, let's try to dissect this. Why would a group of twenty-somethings, let alone, a group of social media influencers, gentrify a whole town? Although it didn't really add anything to the plot, the subplot about the main character, Lila, surviving a school shooting would've been interesting. What if, instead, her sister and her friends were activists on their to protest against gun laws in Texas, and suddenly, their car breaks down and they encounter Leatherface. See. Plain and simple, cut and dry. The plot doesn't have to be that complicated. After all, a Texas Chainsaw plot should be simplistic at best. But I guess social media influencers are part of the algorithm, so they went with that instead. I mean, I really don't get the purpose of this plot. Were the filmmakers trying to convey a message somehow? Are we supposed to like these characters? Speaking of, let's break them down one by one. 

I want to say this off the bat. I think Melody is the most irritating character of them all. She seems like the type of girl that would smile in your face but talk shit behind her back when you're not looking. For example,  when she confronts Ms. McCumber about the expired deed of the orphanage, just listen to the tone of her voice: "um, you don't belong here..." She sounds so snotty. And not to mention, the scene where she insults the local mechanic, Kitcher, for carrying a gun. He is at ear length when she criticizes his penis size. What the fuck?

After Ms. McCumber is sent to the hospital, the movie at least tries to redeem Melody, but I just don't care whether she lives or dies. She is still a terribly written character who recklessly puts her sister and her friends in danger for her own personal gain. Am I supposed to get by that? Though I would say the actress does a decent enough job even if her character sucks. 

Dante is equally obnoxious. He is supposed to be some sort of chef who cranks out cooking tutorials on his Instagram. And...that's it. That's all I know about him. I mostly want to focus on why I find this character obnoxious. Now, when he and the group scout around the town, he notices a confederate flag by the window of Ms. Mccumber's house. 

This "triggers" Dante, prompting him and Melody to BREAK inside this woman's house to confront her.

As you can see Ms. McCumber is rather polite about this and even offers some tea. Oh and uh, shout out to underrated actress Alice Krige who's recently been relegated to creepy old woman roles and should have much more credit than she deserves. Now, Ms. McCumber seems like a well-adjusted elderly woman but the problem is, she seems to be from another time and casually uses the N-word. Not with the hard R but with an O. But this still pisses Dante off and he agrees with Melody to kick this woman out. Yes, he is so eager to kick this sickly old woman out for being innocently ignorant.  I hate to bring up the subject of race when it comes to this movie because it didn't need to be here at all. And quite frankly, I find myself being offended when the writers decided to attach the subject of race to the only lone black guy in the group.

But besides all that, Dante really didn't do much for me, however, he does get a really gruesome death scene. 

His girlfriend Ruth seems to be the nicest character of the bunch. She even joins in to check on Ms. McCumber when she has her heart attack.

But her kindness doesn't save her in the end and Ruth gets killed off rather quickly without us getting to know her at all. 

Then we have Ritcher, who seems to be the only character with any common sense at all and he's pretty hot to boot. The dude's got muscles for days. He's referred to as a "nihilist" but in actuality, he's just a guy that's getting by. He might not be the most approachable guy in the world but at least he has some morals unlike the obnoxious social media influencers invading his hometown.

Just when does the right thing by helping Melody, he gets smashed in the head quite brutally by Leatherface. 

Here we have Lila played by the very talented Elsie Fisher who did an incredible performance in Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade. I can see that Elsie Fisher tried her best here, but unfortunately, she has to work with a really shitty script. The worst dialogue she gets is: "Hey, Leatherfuck!" are you serious? How would she know his name is Leatherface? However, I think "Welcome to Texas, Motherfucker!" from Texas 3D is still the worst lines ever.

Okay, the thing about Lila is that she survived a traumatic school shooting. Like I said, a subject like this should've been explained more. Gun laws is a real-world issue and if the plot could've got a tad bit more subtle, the characters would've been less obnoxious. If the movie focused more on Lila's trauma and less on the idiotic shenanigans of the social media influencers, the movie would have a decently, if not competently, written screenplay.

But what the filmmakers do in the "actual" movie is use this as a minor in the midst of Leatherface's killing spree. Worst of all, that's the only character development Lila gets without any nuance at all. And I guess, in the end, Lila overcomes her fear of guns and shoots at Leatherface, which leads to the really cringy Leatherfuck line. Ugh. I just felt that Lila was such a wasted character. 

Speaking of wasted character, we have the terribly misused Olwen Fouere as none-other-than Sally freakin' Hardesty. Okay, I just have to get the elephant out of the room. I don't know why the filmmakers decided to cast a different actress in this role. This is the prime example of forced fanservice because this didn't have to exist at all. I mean this really needs to be talked about. Now there is a trend going on with these "requels," which is bringing back an iconic actress that played a popular final girl character in a horror franchise. I'm trying to figure out why the filmmakers would even consider bringing back Sally Hardesty knowing full well that the original actress, Marilyn Burns, died about seven years ago. For instance, whenever I think of Laurie Strode, I think of Jamie Lee Curtis. Whenever I think of Nancy Thompson, I think of Heather Langenkamp. And whenever I think of Sidney Prescott, I think of Neve Campbell. To have another actress replace Marilyn Burns in this role, I find to be disrespectful of her legacy, especially with the lengths she went through while filming the original.

Now I can see that this actress tries and she kind of resembles Marilyn Burns, but Sally Hardesty serves no purpose to the plot. If she was the actual main character, it would make sense...But she's not for some reason. Hell, she's barely even a supporting character, it's basically a cameo. Okay, so almost fifty years have passed since the original film and Sally Hardesty has transformed herself into this badass ranger but she's still traumatized by the events of 1973. Now how the film keeps beating us over the head that is the real Sally Hardesty is that she constantly stares at a photo of her and her friends. It's been almost fifty years now! Does she have any new friends or surviving family members to keep her company? Do you mean to tell me that this woman has been a hermit with absolutely no human interaction? And now all of sudden, she waited all this time to get revenge on Leatherface? None of this makes any sense. And it gets more convoluted as the movie progresses.

As with any horror film, the writer chose to make Sally stupid for the movie to press on. Case in point, when she saves Lila and Melody from Leatherface and just when she's about to pull off in the car, she...STOPS the car and LOCKS them inside. This is all because the writers wanted to give Sally and Leatherface this epic when, in actuality, it feels very forced and unnecessary. So when she finally confronts him, Sally has her gun pointed right at him. It seems like she's ready to shoot him but...she won't kill him until she wants Leatherface to say her name. What kind of dumbshit is this? Lady, it's been almost fifty fucking years. Do you really expect him to remember your name? I mean she has every opprotunity to kill him right then and there and she's the only one with a goddamn shotgun. Yet, she won't give herself to do the deed because Leatherface doesn't know her name? Bullshit. Of course, Leatherface just stares at her dumbfounded and walks away. Wow, even Leatherface is over this shit. So Sally suddenly has a light bulb blink her in head and she lets out Lila and Melody from the car as Leatherface prey on them. And that's when Sally finally shoots her shotgun. Are you kidding me? Fuck off, movie.

But when her and Leatherface face off...Sally loses instantly. She is literally chainsawed up in the air and flung over to the trash pile. Some seconds later, she is able to use her shotgun one last time and has a whole conversation with Lila before dies. How is that possible? Her innards should be torn to shreds there's no way she could've been alive for that long. This movie is a goddamn cartoon. There I said it. This movie is beyond logic and physics at this point. There's just no way I can buy this movie as a requel to the classic 1974 film, which was lauded for its bleak realism.

So yeah, they totally killed off Sally Hardesty, who was on screen for approximently five minutes with no character development whatsoever. Wow, what a complete waste of a character. 

Last but not least, we have Leatherface who, I think, is the best part of the movie. This Leatherface is more brutal and straight to the point, which is what this movie needed. But, and it's a big but, I can't help but compare him to Jason Voorhees. I know that it's beginning to be a habit. Comparing other slasher villains to Jason Voorhees but that's how I feel. Case in point, Leatherface has the biggest body count of any of the previous films. He is very no-holds-barred and far apart from the whimpering manchild who is forced to do terrible things.

Furthermore, I'm trying to figure out what's Leatherface's actual age here. I'm assuming he's probably in his mid-to-late sixties, early seventies in the least. I'm guessing he was a teenager during the events of the first film. Okay, I'll buy that. But what really happened during the events of the first film? Were the brothers caught for their crimes and Leatherface was the only one that got away? It's never really entirely explained. But at least Mark Burnham turned Leatherface into this destructive force of nature, much similar to Andrew Bryniarski's portrayal in the remake. So that's probably the only good thing I could say about this movie. 

The so-called investors are nothing but chainsaw fodder and not the sharpest tools in the shed. For example, when one of them sees a dead body and quickly runs inside the bus, Lila wants to know what's happening. For some reason, she ordered Lila to stay on the bus without simply telling her that there is dead body outside and they might be in danger. Do these people have any common sense at all? But then there is the incredibly cringy scene where Leatherface ambushes them on the party bus. Okay, so you have a chainsaw-wielding, face-wearing maniac standing in front of them. Do they freak out? Do they panic? NO. They just stand there like complete idiots and then one guy lifts up his phone and says, "Make one move and you're canceled, bro." What? Like I said before, this movie is a freakin' cartoon and it just go to show that these people are nothing but props to be killed off.

However, the bus party bloodbath was the only scene that kept me interested,  just in terms of how ballsy it is. It sort of reminded me of the boiler room scene in Hellraiser 3, which makes me wonder if they took inspiration from that.

Okay, this is the part where I spoil the movie for a bit but if you don't care that's fine.

Let's start with the climax and oh my gosh it's so hilarious to me:

It's the part where Melody UPCHUCKS Leatherface with a battle cry. L-O-Freakin-L! It's so damn cheesy!

But the ending is the real kicker:

Dun! Dun! Dun! Melody gets beheaded by Leatherface. I know this is supposed to be a shocking ending but the thing is...I don't give a fuck about Melody. I know the movie tries to redeem her but she's the reason why she and Lila are in this situation in the first place. Sorry, I don't feel bad for her. Now, I could feel bad for Lila because she's the only sympathetic character but the moment is ruined by Leatherface's triumphant chainsaw dance as Lila screams while being charted off in a tesla that drives by itself. It has to be seen to be believed. So freakin' hilarious.

The tone of the movie is all over the place. It's this weird juxtaposition between the over-the-top zaniness of TCM II and the gritty realism of the original and the 2003 remake. This film literally has no identity and I'm trying to decipher whether this movie is a lazy cash grab at best. 

The script is the worst of all and I pretty much broke down every single reason why none of the movie's plot points doesn't work. Now, I'm not going to knock Chris Thomas Devlin. He's living every screenwriter's dream by having his first screenplay produced into a movie. But I just have to say this, the first try isn't always the best, especially if it's a sequel from a horror movie franchise. 

Honestly, when I look into the Texas Chainsaw franchise as a whole, it's a complete and utter mess. I just feel that the 1974 film works as a stand-alone film. Sure, TCM II has its fans, I mean it's not my favorite horror sequel ever, but I can see why people consider that to be the "true" sequel to the original. However, the rest of the series are basically reboots that have no connection with one another. And there's not much after that. This franchise is beyond done at this point and this particular film is the final nail-in-the-coffin. No more films please, we've had enough.

My Final Word: You can watch it out of curiosity, but this movie is overall trash. Period.