Horror resurgence is at an all time high now. Thanks to Halloween 2018’s success at continuing / starting a new part of the franchise and ignoring everything else except the original it was only a matter of time until we saw someone else attempt it. Here comes Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was bought by Netflix and pushed to streaming only, to attempt to create a sequel to only the original 1974 film. Almost as expected though, it doesn’t work the way it wished it would.
The set up moves along at a rapid pace. We follow Melody (Sarah Yarkin), her younger sister Lila (Elsie Fisher), their business partner Dante (Jacob Latimore) and his girlfriend Ruth (Nell Hudson). The four of them are heading to a small Texas ghost town that they’ve purchased and are auctioning off but their millennial / social media influencer style doesn’t fit well with the few people in town they run into. After a run in goes south with a sick old woman who still lives in one of the houses though it unleashes the fury of her adoptive son Leatherface who goes on a spree against anyone he sees.
For such a simple script it gets so convoluted and overly complicated so quickly. Lila is the survivor of a school shooting we see in flashbacks and her interactions with another character and his guns just seems to start then die off and not go anywhere. The incident leading to Leatherfaces rampage starts over a confederate flag then moves into other issues with knee jerk reactions instead of a second of thought. We even get the gentrification angle that is mainly there to put a bus full of bodies in the scene for slaughter.
Thankfully due to the film coming in at 80 minutes with credits there isn’t much time here to deep dive into much here. Sadly this means director David Blue Garcia isn’t able to do much with any characters personalities, these side stories, or much explaining due to almost having to speed run through everything. Even following Halloween 2018s trend to bring back old characters we see the return of the Sally character, the survivor for the original (though played by someone else), who is almost just there as a point to add 5 more minutes into the movie.
What really matters here though is Leatherface. Sadly though he isn’t the same Leatherface you’ve come to love. Gone is the tense, gritty, and terrifying traits of him from the original to make him into almost a generic slasher monster. Set aside the fact that following this story Leatherface would be a man in his 70s or so, he still is a large lumbering force to be messed with.
The kills though are fun and often times done well. A few instances where they looked cheaper than others did stand out though. Leatherfaces mask also looked really well done though at times almost like an off brand version of The Toxic Avenger. Since not a single character here is likeable you almost are rooting for Leatherface just to see another gory death.
While the plot to get to Leatherfaces slaughterfest is almost beyond awful, mixed with horribly unlikeable characters and dead end plot points, once the chaos gets going it doesn’t really stop. Thankfully the short run time means this doesn’t have time to drag on much as well. If you just want a mindless slaughterfest that features someone named Leatherface this isn’t bad. Sure parts of it are almost an insult to the original but at least it has some redeeming qualities.
Score :
2.5 / 5
