The 80’s aesthetic is in! In cinema, at least. Sorry, bell bottoms. You have to stay in the closet. Theatres are flooded with the countless remakes and reimaginings of 80s classics. The horror genre is no stranger to this trend. Stranger Things helped usher in a fanaticism for neon lights, teen drama, and cheap thrills. In the last few years, we have seen remakes of Halloween, Scream, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Chucky, with even more movies on the horizon. Slipped in with the rest of these was Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The new Texas Chainsaw Massacre, directed by David Blue Garcia, is a cheap thrill that tries to juggle lofty concepts to moderate success.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) picks up decades after the original. Melody, Lila, Dante, and a group of liberals head to a remote Texas town to auction off defaulted properties to the highest bidder. When they accidentally try to evict someone who was even with the bank, things go downhill fast. The tenant goes into shock, and her son, the titular Leatherface, goes on a rampage. This movie delivers on suspense and gore. The subpar b stories and the poor character development are where it falls flat.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre is at its best when it is at its bloodiest. Leatherface breaks a man’s arm and punctures their throat with the exposed bone. He uses a broken window to slit the throat of a fierce combatant. He is smart in his bloodlust. There is one particular scene in a bus that excels in the bloodletting. Garcia films these moments with cinematography that tries to mirror the spectacle of the original. The suspense leading up to these moments works too. There are a few wonderful cat and mouse moments, where Melody crawls through the run-down home of Leatherface with him on the prowl. The town is oppressive. The final conflict does a wonderful job at toying with expectations, and with showing how cunning Leatherface can be.
The review would be glowing if it featured characters to care about. The body count in this film is massive. Unfortunately, I didn’t really care about most of them. No time was spent fleshing out these characters. The bus of liberals has a paper-thin characterization. Dante messed up and paid the price for it. We didn’t care about the mother of Leatherface dying, because she was painted as a creepy old crone with a rebel flag. Melody, the main character, had a decent amount of time spent on her. Even then, she still felt flat. It wasn’t due to bad performances. The actors all did sufficiently well. It boils down to the script not letting them breathe. The film ends on a wholly unsatisfying note with one of the most lackluster cameos in this sequel remake trend. It sets up for a possible sequel, but I don’t know if the mask needs to be donned again.
The film features a subplot with Lila, Melody’s sister, becoming a survivor. She lived through a school shooting when she was younger. The film harkens back to these moments with cuts to her lying on the ground surrounded by a sea of corpses in a school hall. They give her the strength to fight back against Leatherface in the direst moments. Sadly, this subplot comes off as exploitative and unnecessary. Outside of the shooting, Lila doesn’t really have much of a personality.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) tries to bring lofty ideas into a slasher bloodbath. Unfortunately, only one of those things was done well. The gore is a spectacle to behold with buckets of tension. If you want a simple, bloody flick, this is a great movie to check out. I would turn back to Midsommar or something else if mental stimulation is more your speed.
Enjoyability: 8/10
My rating: 6/10
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