TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2022)
"After nearly 50 years of hiding, Leatherface returns to terrorize
a group of idealistic young friends who accidentally disrupt his
carefully shielded world in a remote Texas town."
(IMDB)
I haven't watched a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie in a long time.
When I saw it on my Netflix queue, I remembered how strange the 70's original (pictured above) was and the entertaining cheese of the 2013 sequel (below).
Unfortunately this 2022 rendition impressively managed to lack both the 70's original strangeness and 2013's semi-lovable cheese.
The 2022 sequel's cast consists of millennial kids: a tomboy girl suffering PTSD from a school shooting, her loud-mouthed food-truck owning sister, the sister's business partner, and the business partner's generic psycho-chum fiance.
They arrive in rural Texas in an electric car, criticizing the gas-guzzling locals, and publicly insult a fellow gas-station customer for his open-carry firearm. The reason for their arrival is an investor auction for an out-of-luck ghost town where they've supposedly bought the rights to some of the town buildings. Their wish is to turn these forgotten conservative derelicts into an oasis for millennials fleeing expensive liberal cities.
While there are some stereotypical lead-ups to some situations with the seemingly simplistic theme of "liberal people good, conservative people bad," we see a trucker explain that he carries a pistol due to feral pigs roaming the area (which of course we never see) and sheriffs who go from paranoid to friendly upon learning one of the kids has relatives that used to be from the area.
We also quickly learn why the first-introduced character dislikes guns: she's a survivor of a school shooting and has the recent scar from a gunshot wound to prove it.
People are shaped by their local spheres of personal experience -- you might like guns if you get attacked by wild pigs from time to time, or you hate guns because someone took a gun to school -- a place where children are supposed to feel safe-- and turned into the site of a bloody massacre.
While I can appreciate the juxtaposition of school-shooting against a chainsaw massacre, one scenario is danger in a familiar space while the other is danger in an unfamiliar space. 2022's Chainsaw kids rudely venture from their liberal metropolitan habitat to a remote dying conservative ghost town, with no respect or request toward locals for guidance. I also found it difficult to believe that they wouldn't stumble upon articles of the town's infamous chainsaw killings while researching potential investor-properties. The murders are the area/town's most important recent events. To carelessly travel into a strange land without any caution, or olive branch of obeisance toward the natives sounds like a recipe for trouble.
The drama begins to darken upon their spotting of a Confederate flag on a nearby building. They go inside, assuming it's empty, and unable to remove the flag discover its current owner still inside -- an old sick woman. She reveals that she used to run an orphanage, that she lives there with the last of her kids and that he's a "special one" that only she can take care of.
If you look closely in the above photo, you can see an unusually large child hiding in the doorway. By special it is hinted that this last child, now grown man, is developmentally disabled. Growing up in a remote rural area, he probably didn't have access to the appropriate help. We are then faced with the reality that Leather Face is not just a deranged villain but a mentally disabled person as well. Not that it excuses his murderous ways but his specific case of nature and nurture are the irrefutable brick and mortar of his dark character: a lonely isolated man incapable of expressing himself, burdened by not just vast mental difference but physical enormity and strength.
Without spoiling too much, it is the death of his caretaker the old woman that once again sets him on his path of violence. After questioning the business kids about whether they truly had a right to her house (which we learn later they did not), she suffers a heart attack and later passes on in Leather Face's arms, en route to the hospital. Her dying words are for him to stay out of her bedroom, where we later see him smash open an old wall and pull out a hidden item: his titular weapon.
Without spoiling too much, carnage ensues and many die.
A potential sequel is hinted at.
The movie looked to have a decent budget but nowhere near enough focus was given to story and acting, which resulted in a rather fright-less horror flick.
Memorable Shots
Probably the most striking shot in the whole movie, Leather Face standing in a field of dead sun flowers.
An obvious jab at millennial culture, thinking they can shame any enemy into submission.
Leather Face might as well be wearing a t-shirt that reads, "I Don't Give A Damn About My Bad Reputation!"
Love the sparks in this shot.
Probably the 2nd greatest shot in the film, especially love who clear it is when lit by lightning from a storm. That was another gripe I had with the movie, despite my great connection, most of the film was clear when it was boring and blurry when exciting stuff was happening.
Hope you enjoyed this review! I tried not to include too many excessively gory shots but had to show a little since this was a horror movie.
Let me know what you think in the comments below!
Not a big fan of gore, and reading your review definitely didn't make me want to see the movie more or anything. From the way you portray it, it feels like they had some sort of ideas and attempts.. but ended up being lazy in executing them, so plot is little more than a small introduction to a festival of blood and death.
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Yeah I agree. I wouldn't even recommend this to anyone who was a fan of gore because how poorly shot it was. Felt like a Jason Bourne movie the way they kept blurring the action to perhaps make it more intense or so they must've thought.
For anyone not a fan of gore but still a fan of scary movies, I'd recommend a 2013 movie "Mama" or the 2018 TV Show "The Haunting at Hill House."
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