Texas Chainsaw Massacre Review

A good chainsaw never dies, it only needs gas. For "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," the ninth film in the franchise, that means more gore, plenty of callbacks and social media influencers. Does it work? If you just want to see people get chopped up, then yeah, it'll do.

But just how do you make a sequel to one of the most influential horror movies of all time? Why, you take 2018's "Halloween" approach of course! That includes this film's answer to Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode, with Sally (now played by Olwen Fouéré), returning from the 1974 original. She's been waiting for "him" to return (heard that one before?), a woman worn down by the weight of being the sole survivor (and her trusty shotgun, although I don't know how much one weighs).

Seemingly ignoring the sequels and taking place decades after the first, if you can trust the internet, the young people ripe for the slicing and dicing include Melody and Dante, played by Sarah Yarkin and Jacob Latimore respectively, who plan on selling pieces of a ghost town in Texas (where else?). Her sister Lilia (Elsie Fisher) comes along for the ride but doesn't want to be there, and filling out our initial quadrilogy of protagonists is his would-be fiancée (Nell Hudson). A smart reader can figure out why, in a slasher film, I didn't list her name or describe her much. Ooooh, the spoilers.

They arrive in a poorly veiled Telsa and immediately make no friends with the locals, including their gun-toting carpenter Richter (Moe Dunford) and Mrs. Mc (Alice Krige), owner of the local orphanage who swears she still owns the property. That's trouble when you're trying to auction off the town to the now arrived bus of young rich kids, and even more so when you realize just who the only orphan under her care is. Nevertheless, chaos ensues.

What am I supposed to critique here? Do the characters get killed "real good?" It serves no purpose but to keep an antiquated series relevant by showing us, well, characters getting killed "real good." Lots of gore and guts are shown, the deaths viscous and visceral. It didn't shock me but it didn't put me in a good mood. Maybe that's the whole point to these pictures, I wouldn't know. Bad movie critic move here, but I confess, I've never seen any of the previous eight films. And after this 2022 entry, I'm not sure I want to.

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is an ugly way to spend eighty one minutes of your life. It's like one of those "true crime" documentaries on steroids, with any semblance to what actually inspired it buried so deep in gallons of blood that it exists purely to gross out audiences.

That doesn't mean it's devoid of skill; it's professionally made (even and especially the onscreen deaths), with some exceptionally well shot moments of a seemingly endless field. The southern sun burning into the camera with a sort of haze in the distance. A sole road dots it, with no incoming traffic. It makes you really feel as if it's taking place miles and miles away from anything close to modern civilization. It's a stark contrast to the dark, rainy scenes of the desolate village of decaying buildings.

Wait, does that mean I admire it? Hell no! It remains a "dumb horror movie," the kind where if a line of dialogue mentions a corkscrew, it'll come up later (no doubt in a moment of peril) and no less than four (four!!!) characters seemingly die only to suddenly get up! I'm generally fine with dumb flicks, but I do not have a tolerance for ones that try to act smarter than they really are. Racial tensions involving a confederate flag are brought up for no reason other than to fill out a couple of scenes, but the most egregious example is with Lila, who barely lived through previous public shooting. Early on we see her pick up a gun, only to understandably panic with the flashbacks of what ever horrors she endured. That makes sense. What doesn't make sense is how later we're supposed to believe that she's totally fine handling a shotgun to blast at the titular maniac! Fight gun violence with guns!? What sense does that make!!??

Another moment of stupidity comes when Sally, loaded weapon in hand, confronts Leatherface in the orphanage; he slumps on a bed, chainsaw down but still within arms reach, and she starts yelling! "Do you remember me" or something like that, and she doesn't fire! She couldn't miss if she tried! But she wants, no, needs him to remember her, but he isn't paying her any attention. What, does she think, there are TWO Texas chainsaw massacres and she's just talking to the wrong one?! Now there's a plot.