‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ Is A Bloody, Bleak Train To Murderville

The original 1974 Tobe Hooper classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre sees Sally Hardesty, her brother Franklin, and their friends cross paths with the cannibalistic Sawyer clan, including the large, mute, costume changing antagonist known as “Leatherface,” a hulking murderer that dons a mask made of human skin to kill on behalf of his family. The film was a horror phenom and spawned a whole franchise, but 2022’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre resets the clock as a direct sequel to the first. It’s a pointed bloody entry in an otherwise uneven franchise, but the bleak bloody hopelessness of it all may well not be everyone’s speed.

Directed by David Blue Garcia (from a script by Chris Thomas Devlin), the film follows a set of young, brash entrepreneurs who come across Leatherface and what’s left of the clan 50 years after the events of the original. Disrupting his home is a bad plan, and Leatherface goes on a rampage that will leave a permanent mark on the town and its new visitors. To make matters more complicated, Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré), the sole survivor of the original, also enters the fray on a mission of revenge.

It’s a largely well performed outing among the new characters who are given characters complex enough to perform. Sarah Yarkin excels as lead Melody, walking the line between a bold young opportunist and a scream queen in the making. Elsie Fisher (playing Melody’s sister Lila) is also memorable, showing a character who finds strength to push through trauma. Mark Burnham plays the massive Leatherface with largely wordless menace, a memorable force of nature whose chainsaw you don’t want to be on the business end of.

Once the film gets going it’s a very brutal affair. Leatherface gets a new mask early on, or rather he makes a new mask in a shocking scene that sets the tone from the get-go, and from there it’s a nonstop train ride through a river of blood. (If there’s one thing the movie teaches, it is that you shouldn’t let yourself get stuck in a crowded space with Leatherface). For folks who love their horror stories bloody, visceral, and their villains unyielding, this may well be for you. It’s also worth noting that the kills are properly merciless and swift as one can expect from this particular antagonist.

That said, it’s certainly not perfect. The film feels mighty slow up front, as though it’s just waiting for that first encounter with the Sawyers to get going. The pervasive bleakness may also not work for every audience member, as it starts to feel a little one-note at a point with too few twists to build proper suspense… the characters are just in the way of a chainsaw-holding train, can’t get out of the way, but some of the ‘what’s going to happen’ is gone because, face it, it’s clear what’s going to happen and happen it will.

Its characterization of Leatherface also flies in the face of the original entry, where “Leatherface” was but one visage/personality of Jedidiah Sawyer, who in the course of the original donned several distinct masks because he was more a blank slate, simple weapon of a nefarious family (who to be fair is capable of great evil) than he is an intelligent, pure evil force of nature behind a mask. For Leatherface, the mask is the man and the mask determines the man—Jedidiah is not always Leatherface, and donning the mask sort of activates the persona towards a susceptible and murderous end. Here, Jedidiah is a killer outside and before the mask, and remains nothing else in the course of the film while on his own campaign of revenge. It’s a riff on the character that may not sit well with purist fans of the original.

All that said, in an otherwise uneven franchise (the 1974 entry was a masterpiece that still holds up, beyond that it really depends on individual preference) it may be an engaging enough return to form for fans of the franchise, although it misses the charm that makes the original so memorable. If you’re looking for a bus to murder town, however, this may be just the ticket.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre drops 2/18 on Netflix.