TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2022)

Studio:     Netflix/Legendary
Director:    David Blue Garcia
Writer:     Chris Thomas Devlin, Fede Alvarez, Rodo Sayagues
Producer:  Fede Alvarez, Herbert W. Gains, Kim Henkel, Ian Henkel, Pat Cassidy
Stars:     Sarah Yarkin, Elsie Fisher, Mark Burnham, Moe Dunford, Nell Hudson, Jessica Allain, Olwen Fouere, Jacob Latimore, Alice Krige, William Hope, Jolyon Coy, Sam Douglas

Review Score:

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Summary:

Four friends attempt to bring new business into an abandoned Texas ghost town, but they inadvertently disturb an infamous murderer who had been in hiding for decades.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

At a remote gas station with a souvenir section dedicated to a notorious chainsaw massacre in 1973, Lila asks the proprietor Herb about the massacre’s only survivor, Sally Hardesty. Lila learns Sally spent decades as a Texas Ranger so she could hunt for the killer, Leatherface, but Sally never found him.

Lila rejoins her sister Melody, Melody’s fellow chef Dante Spivey, and Dante’s fiancée Ruth, all of whom are on their way to Harlow with a business plan to revive the ghost town by opening a restaurant.

Because her sister survived a traumatic school shooting, Melody makes snide comments to Richter, a local gassing up his vehicle at a nearby pump, about Richter carrying a gun. The quartet also has an altercation with the local sheriff and his deputy, who resent their plan to gentrify Harlow.

Melody, Lila, Dante, and Ruth arrive in Harlow. Dante discovers Richter is the contractor he hired to renovate the restaurant.

Dante enters an abandoned orphanage to remove its confederate flag hanging outside. Dante and Melody meet Virginia McCumber, an ailing old woman who ran the orphanage and now lives with her adopted son, Leatherface, as Harlow’s last remaining residents.

Believing her to be squatting in a building he now owns, Dante contacts the sheriff to remove Virginia following an argument about the property and the flag. Virginia insists she sorted her issues with the bank, but the sheriff and deputy forcibly pull her outside, causing Virginia to have a heart attack. Leatherface carries Virginia to the sheriff’s van to be transported for medical attention. Since Melody, who feels guilty for Virginia’s collapse, has to meet potential investors scheduled to arrive soon, Ruth joins the sheriff, deputy, and Leatherface in taking Virginia to a hospital.

The investors arrive in Harlow on a bus. Dante introduces Melody to bank representative Catherine. Melody and Lila have a fight because Lila doesn’t want to live in Harlow and feels her sister is overprotective. While Melody addresses the investors over a BBQ party, Lila talks to Richter about guns.

Virginia dies in the back of the police van, which sends Leatherface into a rage. Ruth texts Melody to tell her about Virginia’s death. Leatherface breaks the deputy’s arm and uses his broken bone to stab him in the neck. The dying deputy wildly fires a bullet that shoots the sheriff, who subsequently crashes the van.

When Ruth regains consciousness after the crash, she sees Leatherface cutting off Virginia’s face and donning it as a mask. Ruth uses the police radio to call for help. Herb hears the call over his scanner and phones Sally Hardesty to warn her that Leatherface has returned. Leatherface beats the sheriff to death and then stabs Ruth in her stomach.

Melody and Dante argue about their responsibility for Virginia’s death. Thinking Virginia may have died for nothing, Richter confiscates the bus keys and tells Dante he will only return them if Dante can produce a deed proving he owns the orphanage.

With the deed missing from his files, Dante and Melody search the orphanage to see if Virginia kept any records. Melody finds a title proving Virginia actually did still own the property.

Leatherface returns to the house and viciously hacks at Dante with a cleaver. Melody hides in a closet where she watches Leatherface cradle one of Virginia’s dresses and apply her makeup to his mask. Leatherface then destroys a wall to retrieve a chainsaw hidden behind it. Meanwhile, the investors move their party onto the bus to escape a sudden rainstorm.

Dante manages to stumble outside. Richter and Catherine see that Dante is horribly slashed before he collapses and dies. Realizing Leatherface is responsible, Richter warns Catherine to keep everyone on the bus while he goes to confront the killer.

From a new hiding spot underneath a bed, Melody watches Richter fight Leatherface. Leatherface kills Richter by impaling his neck on a shard of broken window glass.

After retrieving the bus keys from Richter’s body, Melody tries to sneak out of the house. Leatherface throws a sledgehammer that knocks Melody through a staircase and into the cellar. Melody crawls for her life as Leatherface saws through the floor. Lila opens a grate to pull her sister outside.

Melody and Lila flee to the bus. Leatherface decapitates the driver and slaughters trapped investors, including Catherine, as he chainsaws his way through the bus. Melody and Lila escape through the lavatory’s skylight.

After investigating the site of the van crash, Sally arrives in Harlow. Melody and Lila seek safety in Sally’s truck. However, claiming she needs them as bait so she can finally kill Leatherface, Sally leaves the sisters locked inside.

Armed with a shotgun, Sally confronts Leatherface in his orphanage bedroom. Sally demands that Leatherface acknowledge who she is and what he did in 1973. The disappointment freezes Sally when she realizes Leatherface doesn’t remember her.

Leatherface breaks into the truck to get at the sisters. Sally returns to shoot at Leatherface. Sally and Leatherface’s confrontation ends with Leatherface impaling Sally on his saw.

Using the keys Sally gave her before going after Leatherface again, Melody tries to run over Leatherface, but merely crashes Sally’s truck. With her leg severely injured, Melody implores her sister to run. Lila does, but comes back to inadvertently lure away Leatherface when he returns to kill Melody.

With Leatherface about to kill Lila, Sally shoots at him one more time while she bleeds out on the ground. Leatherface retreats into an abandoned movie theater. Lila moves to go back to her sister, but Sally warns that if Lila runs away, Leatherface will never stop haunting her. Sally dies.

Armed with Sally’s shotgun, Lila confronts Leatherface inside the theater. Remembering the trauma of the school shooting, Lila freezes as Leatherface prepares to kill her. Melody arrives in time to provide a distraction. Lila pulls out of her shock and uses the shotgun to fire at Leatherface. When the gun runs out of shells, Melody recovers Leatherface’s chainsaw and slashes him. Leatherface falls into a flooded hole and sinks.

As dawn breaks, Lila picks up Sally’s hat and Polaroid memento of the friends who died in 1973. Melody and Lila prepare to leave town with their Tesla engaged in autopilot mode. Leatherface suddenly pulls Melody through the passenger window and saws off her head. Lila screams in helpless horror from the open sunroof as the car continues pulling away. Leatherface later returns to the farmhouse where he lived in 1973.

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Review:

Not counting credits, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” 2022 only runs an easy, breezy 73 minutes. In this Golden Age of entertainment, when everyone and their brother has a constantly growing backlog of popular culture to consume, there may be no more attractive selling point than, “This will only take you a little over an hour to watch.” That’s immediately a full star in almost any film’s favor.

The catch to TCM 2022’s quickness is that its antagonistic protagonists come with short fuses in order to instigate hasty conflict, resulting in caustic characters prone to rubbing viewers the wrong way. Lila, her sister Melody, Melody’s fellow chef Dante, and Dante’s fiancée Ruth have a plan to turn the dead Texas town of Harlow into a hipster hotspot by opening a restaurant that hopefully attracts additional investors interested in gentrification. While stopped at a gas station, a required location for any horror movie set in remote countryside, Melody can’t help but condescendingly comment on the small dick compensation of a man who drives a gas-guzzler and wears a gun on his belt. Really, Melody? It’s Texas. Many residents commonly carry handguns there. You couldn’t let one harmless encounter go by without barking entitlement-based insults at a stranger?

Dante doesn’t do any better when the quartet arrives in Harlow to find an old lady squatting in a building Dante believes he bought. The confederate flag waving outside doesn’t win her any favor, although the ailing woman innocently believes she made amends with the bank. Dante doesn’t have any patience for the former orphanage caretaker however, so he escalates their misunderstanding as fast as he can by getting the sheriff to forcibly remove her from the home she’s had for 50 years. You don’t even want to try a little diplomacy first, Dante? Going from zero to a-hole in ten seconds will lose you an audience’s sympathy in half as much time. And it’s definitely going to earn the ire of Leatherface, the lady’s last adopted son, when Dante’s tantrum causes her collapse.

The flipside to the flipside of these obnoxious overreactions is that “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” builds people with actual flesh on their bones. You may not like them thanks to their annoying attitudes, but they at least have personalities. They have purposes that service the story too. Lila survived a school shooting. Her overprotective sister thinks she’s helping by moving them to the middle of nowhere. Meanwhile, Melody and Dante have to navigate new rifts in their partnership and schmooze with bank representatives at a BBQ. Many modern horror movies don’t take any time to warm their bodies at all. “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” creates clear characters quickly when any other slasher would be complacent with the hollow simplicity of typical teens on summer vacation.

“Texas Chainsaw Massacre” integrates its callbacks cleverly. Rather than a “Previously On” montage or some equally clunky method of exposition, the movie opens with Lila watching clips from a true crime show, complete with John Larroquette narration, that succinctly summarizes events from the first film. The 1974 classic’s memorable flashbulb noise can be heard as a sound effect when a rusty grill lid opens. This “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” also features something that the original film doesn’t: an actual chainsaw massacre.

Which brings us to the big boon everyone should be able to agree on no matter what they think overall: “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” 2022 features some spectacularly cinematic slaughter. There’s no shortage of crimson to go with the chaotic carnage. Brutally wicked deaths, including one where Leatherface snaps off a man’s arm and stabs his neck with his own broken bone, are as gruesomely gory as they get.

Things do get tricky with the school shooting survivor aspect. Flashback trauma, particularly during the main massacre where fans get their meatiest fix of fantastical mayhem, is arguably inappropriate for a splattery horror flick that probably shouldn’t have that root in reality. That’s a separate debate though, and it might not be universally problematic. Americans deal with gun violence daily, so those scenes are more likely to leave a foul taste in their mouths while international eyes might not have similarly triggering reactions.

Haters will find other gripes to grumble about anyway. Some of those niggles are negligible. Trite trolls preordained that “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” 2022 would be terrible simply because it was shot in Bulgaria instead of its signature state. You wouldn’t know it if no one told you. Someone could have said the movie shot somewhere outside of San Antonio and few folks would be able to tell the difference. It looks like Texas.

Complainers have also jumped to conclusions about the movie’s very vague subtext about racism, guns, and other timely topics. The reality is the movie takes no conclusive position on anything political whatsoever. Sensitive ears merely hear dialogue spiked with buzzwords like “try anything and you’re canceled, bro” and they immediately start crying about “woke” this and “woke” that. TCM 2022 couldn’t care less about true social commentary. Everyone on either side of an issue is equal as far as Leatherface’s chainsaw is concerned.

Evidence will back up more legitimate criticisms. Sally Hardesty’s celebrated return turns out to be an unnecessary inclusion that reeks a little too much of how “Halloween” 2018 (review here) handled Laurie Strode. Then there’s a Leatherface who has to be a minimum of 70 years old, yet he slings sledgehammers like toothpicks and wields his chainsaw like it’s made of paper.

Even with the tight runtime, several stalking scenes last longer than necessary. There’s also a little too much of the sisters sobbing in shock instead of being proactive about protecting people in danger. I guess you can’t have everything, right?

What you can have are distinguishable characters, grisly kills, a setup with enough substance to bring those things together, and a Final Girl faceoff 50 years in the making regardless of its underwhelming outcome. Those are the top priorities for any slasher sequel to home in on, and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” does exactly that, and does it with style. Really, what more can anyone ask from a flagging film series that hasn’t been on firm footing in forever than to celebrate the savage spirit it’s most known for? Love it or loathe it, The TCM franchise hasn’t had an entry this satisfying in decades.

NOTE: There is a post-credits scene.

Review Score: 75

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