The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) was Tobe Hooper’s filthy, no-frills, low-budget horror phenomenon that saw some hippie vagrants run afoul of some truly deranged rednecks. Whether about the atrocities of Vietnam or the violence inherent in meat production (Hooper said he had to give up meat during shooting), the film never explicitly tells you what it’s about beyond abject terror.
Welcome to 2022 then: the year that forgot about subtlety, subtext and subtitles. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) is not “the” Texas chainsaw massacre, but “a” Texas chainsaw massacre, though it would’ve been more appropriately titled Not Another Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In case it was unclear, this film is about a guy in Texas who has a chainsaw and goes on a massacre.
To say it is about anything else would be buying into the surface-level Twitter-isms and political talking points that make up the entirety of the first act of the script. The film follows four young “influencers” who have purchased an abandoned Texas town (like you do), and within the first 10 minutes the movie brings up gentrification, open-carry, school shootings and the Confederate flag. This current-topics-bingo-card version of a script is window dressing taken seriously. But the real plot is equally ridiculous: these young “gentri-f*ckers” (an actual word in the script) accidentally kill Leatherface’s mom and that makes him sad so he goes on a rampage.
Whereas Hooper’s film, and even the oft-overlooked batshit sequel from ’94 subtitled The Next Generation (starring Matthew McConaughey and Renée Zellweger no less), were both relatively bloodless, this film is one of the goriest I’ve seen since the Evil Dead remake, whose director Fede Alvarez gets a story-by and producer credit. Despite the copious splatter and an overkill soundtrack of constant metal-on-metal grating sounds, the opening-to-credits runtime of 73 minutes still drags.
Director David Blue Garcia comes from a cinematography background, and it shows in the quality and composition of some of the shots. However, the film still suffers from that “Netflix neon” lighting that seems inescapable right now, and instantly dated.
As well as the previously mentioned technical missteps in script and sound, this film follows the regrettable trend of slasher franchises past their prime and pulls the legacy card. According to this movie, none of the other sequels happened, Leatherface is pushing 70(!) and has been dormant while the lone survivor of the first film, Sally, has been hunting him for 50 years. What does it think it is, a Halloween? Nope, it’s yet another Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
