TCM 2022 is also chasing a trend, for legacy sequels, and most prominently the template set by Halloween 2108. The plot isn’t well developed, but as far as I can figure out chefs/influencers Melody (Sarah Yarkin) and Dante (Jacob Latimore) have bought the entire, almost totally deserted, town of Harlowe, Texas, and are arriving there to set up (apparently with about seven minutes to spare) for a busload of investors to come in and lease space from them to turn it into a tourist hotspot. Along for the ride are Dante’s girlfriend Ruth (Nell Hudson) and Melody’s sister Lila (Elsie Fisher). Soon after arriving, they find the local orphanage is still occupied by an old woman and her adult ‘son’. No prizes for guessing who the son is. The only real background we get on any of the characters is that Lila is a survivor of a school shooting, and thus very uncomfortable when, stopping for gas, the group sees a man with a large gun strapped to his waist, Of course, he turns out to be their contractor in Harlowe, Richter (Moe Dunford).
Despite the lack of much story, Texas Chainsaw Massacre does seem to want to say something. It’s as confused here as in other areas. It seems to be against Melody and Dante coming in and buying up the town, perhaps trying to criticise gentrification, but if that’s what it wants to do the commentary might be more effective if they were turfing out more than the last two people from what is otherwise a ghost town. It mocks social media a little but doesn’t show that it knows anything about influencer culture. We never see anything of Melody and Dante’s content, nor is it really explained why that content makes Harlowe a place they think they could do something with. You have to wonder just how popular they are because I’d question whether even someone with as powerful a following as Kim Kardashian could pull off what they seem to be attempting here.
What throughline there is to the film’s attempt at a message seems weirdly right-wing. The “You’re canceled” joke, which works no better here than in the trailer, is a lazy trope of right-leaning ‘wit’, but what is truly distasteful is the way the film plays Lila’s backstory. Lila’s journey is one of not just losing her fear of guns but re-embracing them in the wake of her traumatic experience. It leaves a horrible taste in the mouth and gives the whole film a reactionary feel that, while not quite as bad, recalls last year’s odious Run Hide Fight.
Terrible and badly communicated as all this is, I do realise that suspect politics won’t be the main thing that people are coming to Texas Chainsaw Massacre either to see or to criticise. At just 73 minutes pre-credits, the saw has to rev up pretty quickly this time, dispensing with character beats to favour set pieces. On the plus side, at least there’s no messing about in getting to the meat of the film. On the other hand, this haste undermines its interest as a legacy sequel. For as much as it got wrong David Gordon Green’s Halloween did at least devote considerable time to re-establishing and letting us understand where Laurie Strode had ended up. If those beats were there for Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré, doing a decent enough job subbing for the late Marilyn Burns) they have hit the cutting room floor. There’s no insight into what she’s been doing for 45 years or more and less (beyond ‘the film’s not long enough’) into why she doesn’t take several chances she has. There is really no reason for both Sally and these random kids to be in this story. If it’s to be a legacy sequel, then there is something to be made of a weary Sally following one last lead to finally destroy this monster. If you want Leatherface to kill Gen Z Tik Tok users… fine, I guess, but I’m not sure that’s the same movie, especially at this running time.
To give director David Blue Garcia some credit, he came into a difficult situation with this film, replacing the original directors with a week of production already completed. I’m not a fan of the look of the film overall, especially the teal and yellow palette that he and cinematographer Ricardo Diaz arrive at for the entirety of the third act, but there are a few memorable images here, most strikingly Leatherface rising from a field of dead sunflowers. While the original film famously implies almost all of its gore, it’s fair to say that the rest of the franchise has been defined by excess in that area, and you have to hand it to this iteration; it goes for broke and doles out some memorably bloody carnage. While the way the bus sequence starts is a disaster, there are also some brilliantly gross moments as Leatherface chops his way through to the fleeing Melody and Lila, and the showdown with Sally is equally brutal (so much so that a later moment is total nonsense).Character, as mentioned, isn’t the film’s strong suit, and that’s a pity because with a more robust script I could imagine this cast working well. In the brief preamble, though the dialogue clunks, the dynamic is convincing enough, and Yarkin and Fisher both have strong Final Girl energy about them. The problem is that film lacks either the will or the space to develop them enough for that to be something we can really hang on to.
Like most of the other Chainsaw films, this one is never scary. In this respect the original works because the atmosphere simply drips with oppressive terror, while in Hooper’s sequel that’s gone, but I like and care about Stretch and, to a degree, Lou enough to be worried about what happens to them. Neither of those things is present here. The gloss of the way it’s shot strips away any real atmosphere, and there’s no opportunity to know the characters enough to care whether they live or die, so it’s not scary. For some, the simple thrill of the gore and the pace at which the film comes at you may be satisfying enough. That can be a lot of fun, but when you’re attempting, for at least the third time, to directly follow up one of the most uniquely terrorising films ever made, this just doesn’t… ahem… cut it.
★½
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