Halloween 4, 5, and 6 - The Thorn Trilogy

This is where shit starts to get crazy. Since the fanbase was so pissed off with Season of the Witch, they decided to bring Michael Myers and Loomis back. And they also introduced Laurie’s daughter into the mix (and killed Laurie offscreen in the interim). The fourth film just does its best to bring the series back to the original formula, and it’s okay. Honestly, the only crazy thing about this movie is that Loomis survived the explosion at the end of Halloween II. I’m glad that he did, though, because this could be called The Loomis Trilogy just as much as The Thorn Trilogy. 

 Loomis is a bit more unhinged in this one, culminating in him trying to shit a child at the end. The fifth movie truly unleashes him, though. In that one, Laurie’s daughter Jamie is a mute due to her interactions with Michael in the previous film, but she seems to have a psychic connection to him now. 

What makes this one nuts is that Loomis has lost all sense of humanity. He has no interest in protecting Jamie at this point. Instead, she is just a tool to catch Michael. This leads to scenes of Loomis screaming in Jamie’s face, and he eventually holds her up to bait Michael at the end. It’s fucking fantastic. But things also get messy with the fifth one…well, messier.

So the fourth film made it seem like Michael’s evil could be transferred. The fifth film expanded on that with the psychic connection aspect, but there was an added, seemingly random element: the man in black. A man in black appears throughout the movie, most notably at the end. After Loomis captures him, Michael is taken to jail to await transfer to a maximum security facility. The man in black shows up, kills the entire police force (that’s two years in a row that this police force was completely killed off, by the way), and frees Michael. That’s the end. There’s no explanation as to who this guy is or anything. Apparently, it would be explained in the next movie. But while the fourth and fifth movies came out in back to back years, it would be six years before the sixth movie came out.

Halloween 6 (the title has the numeral in the Producer’s Cut) is the messiest movie in the series. At first, an attempt was made to explain the man in black, but the studio hated it. The film was recut to get rid of the more ridiculous story elements, but it also made the movie almost impossible to follow. Because of this, there are two cuts: the theatrical cut and the Producer’s Cut. I’ll mainly be referencing the Producer’s Cut because it’s the version of the film that truly makes this the Thorn Trilogy. But both versions are fucking stupid. So let’s finally get into this Thorn nonsense.

If you make the same slasher villain reappear so many times, eventually you will need to explain why he can’t die. Friday the 13th finally did this with their sixth film, Jason Lives, which has Jason’s corpse get struck by lightning, turning him into the immortal monster we all love instead of just being a guy in a mask. With Halloween 6, the filmmakers decided it was time to finally explain how Michael has been surviving all this shit since Halloween II. It turns out he’s been the tool of the Cult of Thorn, which is run by the random doctor from the first film who argues with Loomis about whether or not Michael can drive. He’s the man in black who’s been pulling the strings all along! What…the…fuck.

So Michael is being controlled by this cult. It’s very unclear what their goal is, but it has something to do with runes and Druid shit (kind of like Season of the Witch), and they need Michael to rape and impregnate his niece, so that their incestuous baby can be killed, which will allow his young cousin (?) Danny to carry on the killing. It’s not clear why Michael can’t just keep doing the killing on his own, but whatever. Eventually, Paul Rudd puts some magic rocks on the ground that stop Michael. This is the kind of stupid shit a franchise has to do when the villain isn’t allowed to be killed off. 

Despite the confusing mess that Halloween 6 created, I actually kind of like the Thorn Trilogy. They could have just kept bringing Michael back to life with little to no explanation. Instead, some poor bastard felt the need to justify his survival. As a fan of weird shit, I’m glad they tried. But no amount of ironic enjoyment can lead me to think of any of these films as “good.” I’m not the intended audience for this shit, anyway. This is probably why after this debacle, the next film decided to just forget this shit ever happened.

Random Thoughts (for Halloween 6)

I'm willing to bet Loomis has fired a gun more times than any other cinematic psychiatrist. 

I’m not going to get into the weeds about differences in the two cuts too much. Just watch the same videos I did if you want that. I do want to point out a couple things I found interesting, though.

In the Producer’s Cut, Loomis explains he had plastic surgery done, which is why his scars are gone. This very short exchange is taken out of the theatrical cut? Why? Did they intentionally create plot holes?

They clearly only had the baby for a few scenes because that is the most bundled up baby in the history of bundled up babies in all the other scenes. It’s a good thing they used a fake baby for most of the scenes, though, because the way Kara is running with it at the end of the Producer’s Cut would surely have broken its neck.

The Producer’s Cut is definitely the more cohesive movie, but they did alter my favorite kill. In the theatrical cut, the evil dad gets electrocuted until his fucking head explodes. It’s amazing. In the theatrical cut, he just dies from electrocution. Lame. But this is literally the only thing that’s better about the theatrical cut.

Watching Paul Rudd sincerely talk about runes and shit adds another level of enjoyment to this messy film. He actually gets to say, “The power of the runes stopped him.”

According to IMDb trivia, there was an unfilmed scene in which the man in black admits to teaching Michael how to drive years ago. God, I wish they had put this in, especially since this character makes such a big deal about Michael being able to drive in the first film.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch - The Outlier

My feelings about the slasher genre are constantly changing. For instance, when I went through the Friday the 13th franchise last year, I was pretty negative about Part V, which is the entry in which Jason was a copycat. I wanted the real Jason. Yet as I went through the Halloween series, especially the most recent film, I found myself not giving a fuck who was behind the mask, or even if the mask was in the movie at all. Maybe it’s just that I don’t hold the Halloween franchise in the same regard as Friday the 13th. Who knows? I bring it up because Halloween III: Season of the Witch is one of my favorite movies in the series. But that wasn’t always the case.

The first time I watched this movie was because the How Did This Get Made? podcast covered it. I found it annoying more than anything, and I thought it was completely ridiculous that Michael Myers wasn’t in a Halloween movie. This time around, however, I appreciated how batshit crazy this movie is, and I’m not alone. This film’s reputation has improved over the years because once you accept that Myers isn’t in it, you can have fun with it.

The crazy plot still cracks me up. It has taken me three viewings over the years to figure the plot out (that fucking Silver Shamrock song getting stuck in my head each time doesn’t help), and I’m still not sure I completely understand it, but here goes: an Irish maskmaker is attempting to please the old Druid gods by selling every child in America a mask with a Stonehenge-infused microchip that, when activated, kills the child and makes snakes and bugs and shit come out of their head. Yeah. And the only person who can stop him is a drunken, horny Tom Atkins.

Tom Atkins plays a divorced doctor who’s never there for his kids. For instance, instead of making time to be with them for Halloween, he runs off with a deceased patient’s daughter to play detective. Why would a doctor suddenly do this? Because he wants to bang the patient’s daughter, of course. 

I can see how all of this would have pissed off Halloween fans when it was first released, but looking at it now, it’s a refreshing change of pace. John Carpenter wanted to be done with Michael Myers after the first film, much less the second. So this was his chance (as a producer) to turn the series into a yearly anthology, featuring a new spooky story each time. He just underestimated how much people just want to see the same shit over and over.

As I pointed out in my last article, I find the Michael Myers character to be the murderous Shape that he’s credited as. There’s nothing there, really. So a Halloween movie without him is more interesting than infuriating. I’m aware I’m in the minority when it comes to Myers, and most fans like this movie only because they now know Myers would come back. I would’ve been okay if he had stayed dead.

This series would be much more interesting if shit completely changed up with each movie, but no one wants that, as evidenced by the tonal and story shifts of the most recent trilogy. Fans of this series cannot be pleased en masse, which is what Carpenter realized with this, leading to his disassociation with the series for decades after this movie. 

The series would go on to bend over backwards to justify bringing Michael back from the dead, and when that got too stupid, they started ignoring sequels, and when those got too stupid, they rebooted the whole thing, and when that got too stupid, they went back and decided to ignore everything except the one film everyone agreed was great. Season of the Witch was the only film with the balls to move on from Michael, and that somehow makes it one of the best Halloween movies. But unfortunately, you can only keep an iconic slasher down for one movie…

Halloween & Halloween II - The Originals

After burning through the entire Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, I originally planned to take a break from horror films, especially long franchises. Then I realized Halloween Ends was coming out, and someone asked me what I thought about H20, a movie I had never seen. Rather than being sensible and planning on tackling the Halloween series next year, I decided to watch every one of these stupid fucking movies in one week. And I did it, but I’m not writing a full article on each film. Instead, I decided to break it down into segments:

• Halloween and Halloween II - The Originals

• Halloween III: Season of the Witch - The Outlier

• Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, and Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers - The Thorn Trilogy

• Halloween H20: 20 Years Later and Halloween: Resurrection - The Copycats

• Halloween and Halloween II - The Zombie Movies

• Halloween, Halloween Kills, and Halloween Ends - The New Trilogy

I learned from writing about the Massacre movies that there were going to be entries in this series that I just didn’t have much to say about, but thankfully the series is easily broken up, aside from the third movie. But before I get into the first two films, I wanted to comment on the series as a whole a bit.

This series isn’t sacred to me, so I’m not going to dwell on what a Michael Myers movie should be or anything like that. This is all going to be about my personal enjoyment of these movies, even if I might consider the vast majority of them to be technically “bad” movies. Even though I hadn’t seen a lot of this series before I started this, I still knew these were going to be easy watches (aside from the Zombie movies) because I find the slasher genre to be almost relaxing at this point. In other words, these articles are just my personal ramblings, and I’m going to be way too forgiving of some of these films, and I might be too harsh on others, but it’s all going to be my honest response based on what I want from these movies. Enough vague nonsense, here are my thoughts on the first two movies.

After watching all of these movies, I can safely consider myself a fan of the Halloween series, but before that, I truly did not care for these movies. And that goes for the sacred first film, as well. I kind of viewed it the same way I think about Citizen Kane, acknowledging that this was a groundbreaking film that changed future films for decades, but I personally wasn’t all that impressed with it. 

So this has always been a movie I knew I should love, but just didn’t. On top of that, I’ve become a huge John Carpenter fan over the years. How could I not love his most famous film? Because of this, I have watched the first film many times, and I’ve always just thought it was okay.

This time around, I appreciated how easy it was to rewatch this movie, and how creepy it is without being gory or going for cheap scares. I learned that I fucking love seeing Michael Myers in daylight. It’s so much creepier to see him standing behind some sheets or by a hedge than it is to see his face appear in the dark. It’s not that seeing his face in the dark is not scary, it’s just expected. Slashers are typically nighttime monsters. You might think seeing them during the day would lessen the effect or, worse, make them look downright goofy. But it works for Myers, and this is one of the main reasons why I’m not crazy about the second film, which takes place entirely at night. 

More than seeing a daytime monster, the original Halloween, and the series as a whole, is defined by its music. Carpenter’s score is iconic, at this point, and it still works. Usually, an effective score shouldn’t be noticed, but that’s not the case here as I find the score to be the star of the film. It does such an amazing job of taking what could be boring, long scenes and turning them into extremely tense moments.

Appreciating the atmosphere and pace of the film this time around also made me realize something that opened up my enjoyment of the entire series: I don’t give a fuck about Michael Myers. Don’t get me wrong, the outfit and ever-changing mask is synonymous with slasher films, but The Shape is really just a shell of a character. Later films, starting with the second, would attempt to expand on this character, and it’s been downhill ever since. 

I don’t care who’s under that mask. I’m fine with Loomis just telling me he’s pure evil at this point and must be stopped. Good enough for me. I need no motivation. There’s a killer out there, and he must be stopped. That’s the fucking movie. 

In defense of the films that followed, what else could they do? You can’t just have this dead-eyed fucker showing up for no fucking reason other than its Halloween and the local insane asylum has atrocious security and transport personnel. 

I’m not naive enough to say they should have stopped after the first film, but they truly had nowhere else to go with Myers as a character, which is why they added the Laurie-is-his-secret-sister element. Once I accepted that I would never like The Shape more than I did in the first film, it was easy to accept the increasingly goofy sequels. 

Speaking of sequels, the first sequel, Halloween II, is…okay. I already mentioned that I don’t dig the constant night of the movie, and the sister reveal isn’t great, but the story had to go somewhere. Aside from that, there’s another pet peeve I have with the setting: the abandoned hospital. Maybe things were different in the late ‘70s, but in my experience, hospitals are constantly well-lit and populated by more than three people. But maybe the ‘70s were different. Anyway, I just don’t like the setting of the sequel.

Beside that, Michael gets some fun kills (the crazy hot sauna comes to mind) and Loomis gets to run around spouting off cryptic nonsense (“You don’t know what death is!”), so it has its moments. 

By having Michael survive and seem fine soon after the events of the first film, Halloween II also reveals Michael to be so evil that he’s supernatural and possibly cannot be killed. I’m actually fine with this. If you don’t make these slasher villains supernatural, then these movies get too dumb. Because, come on, what normal guy can walk through a hospital door like Michael does at the end?

This brings up one of the common problems with this franchise: is Michael supernatural or just a really strong, evil fucker? The first film made it seem like it was the latter. Yes, he survived some seeming unsurvivable shit, but for all we knew, he was crawling in some bushes, barely alive after he disappeared. Halloween II, however, presents Michael as completely fine. In fact, he’s stronger now. Even though they do try to make it clear that he dies at the end, his ability to bounce back from his injuries in the first film make it clear that he is supernatural. 

This isn’t a problem in general, but the series either went too goofy explaining that he was supernatural (hello, Thorn trilogy), or he’s simply supernaturally strong because slasher villains are supposed to be (H20, Halloween: Resurrection). It’s just uneven. And this applies to the new trilogy, as well, with Michael going from man to supernatural evil killing machine back to man (which I’m actually okay with, as I’ll explain when I get to those movies). This is why I’m a bigger fan of the Friday the 13th series, which finally said, “Fuck it, just Frankenstein Jason’s ass and make him unkillable. Hell, make his evil into a butt worm that travels from person to person, who cares? Just keep making these fucking things!” The Halloween franchise never had that definitive moment because of the messy timelines and multiple reboots, making Michael Myers the most inconsistent villain in slasherdom.

I still kind of love these movies, which is a testament to the first film. Perhaps that’s the problem; the first film was too good to live up to, and the harder filmmakers tried to one-up the original, the more it became apparent that that was impossible. This is why John Carpenter was right about this series all along. After reluctantly writing the script for the second film, he decided the series should move on from Michael Myers all together. Season of the Witch is coming up next.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Franchise - Ranked

This marks the end of my series on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I’ve written pretty exhaustively about all of these movies at this point, but there is one thing I wanted to comment on regarding the entire franchise: the titles.

Somehow, despite this series being nine movies long, which includes a remake, three prequels, and three direct sequels, there is no repetition among the titles. They are all very similar, but each one contains a difference. The original film used “chain saw” instead of “chainsaw,” so that’s how it technically has a different title than the remake. And the Leatherface from the ‘90s contains the subtitle of Texas Chainsaw Massacre III which makes it different from the 2017 Leatherface movie. And the latest movie drops the “the,” making its title barely unique, as well. This doesn’t mean anything, but it is nice that the series doesn’t suffer the maddening titles of the Halloween franchise, which has three (!) movies titled Halloween, and two Halloween IIs. 

Oh, and for no reason at all, I’ve included a bit at the end of each entry letting you know if the film contained narration from John Larroquette.

More importantly, I included the running time of each film. As you’ll see, these movies are better the shorter they are. Anyway, here are my rankings for the series.

1. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

First off, any ranking of this series that doesn’t have the original at the top spot is just bullshit clickbait. No other movie in this franchise is in the same fucking ballpark of this disturbing first movie. 

Larroquette? Yeah

Running time: 83 minutes, perfect

2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

AKA the one where they learned “chainsaw” is one word. I realized over the course of this series that it is stupid and pointless for a filmmaker to try to recreate the first film in any way. Tobe Hooper knew this, which is why he leaned into the comedy for the sequel. We get crazy Dennis Hopper and chili cookoffs, and I’m all for it. Add an unhinged Bill Mosely and you have the second best movie in the series. 

Larroquette? No, but there is opening narration

Running time: 101 minutes, a little too long, but the goofiness makes it okay

3. Texas Chainsaw Massacre

This was the palate cleanser I needed after going through the whole series. If this had been the actually only direct sequel to the original, I would probably hate it. But it’s actually the third direct sequel to the original, which means this series has become way too messy. So I enjoyed the brutal kills and general silliness of it all within the context of a shitty franchise. 

Larroquette? Yeah

Running time: 83 minutes, way to match the original’s run time

4.The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

This is a fine remake, as far as those early ‘00s remakes go, but overstylizing everything completely misses what made the original so effective. But it’s still a pretty good time, mainly thanks to R. Lee Ermey. 

Larroquette? Yeah

Running time: 98 minutes, that’s 8 too many

5. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation

This is already where I start to kind of hate these movies. This one does add a half-assed attempt to mix things up by shoe-horning in a subplot about the family being paid by some secretive boss to create an experience for the victims. But it’s not fully developed and instead feels like a tacked on “surprise ending” in a weak attempt to differentiate itself from the rest of the series. It does have a crazy McConaughey, at least.

Larroquette? No, and no narration

Running time: 87 minutes (theatrical) 

6. Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III

This one felt like someone wanted the series to return to its more serious roots after the comedic second film, but that was a mistake. This just felt like a poorly made remake of the original. But I’ll still take that over any prequel or mythology-building bullshit.

Larroquette? No, but there is opening narration

Running time: 81 minutes (theatrical), hell yeah - 86 minutes unrated, okay

7. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

You know, if “the beginning” of a story was worth telling, it would have been the actual beginning, not the second movie. This was simply made because the remake was successful, but it started the trend that I absolutely despise in this franchise: the need to explore the fucked up family. With this one, it’s just giving you information about the remake that didn’t need to be explained. It’s not that hard to figure this family out: they’re a bunch of crazy fuckheads, end of story.

Larroquette? Yeah

Running Time: 91 minutes, okay, I guess

8. Leatherface

I still hate this movie for exploring the “character” of Leatherface, but overall I’m just numb to the series by the time it gets to this film. The filmmaking and acting is actually fine, but I just don’t want any of this.

Larroquette? No, and no narration

Running time: 88 minutes, okay

9. Texas Chainsaw

Now this one fucking broke me. I hate this stupid shit. It’s a direct sequel to the original that makes the fucked up family the victims. It’s fucking crazy. But worse, none of this movie is fun, save for one kill. If you’re going to make something this fucking stupid, it should at least be fun. This shit was unbearable, and the filmmakers knew it, which is why they tried to make Alexandra Daddario show as much skin as logically possible throughout the film, but no amount of near-nudity can save this garbage.

Larroquette? No, and there’s no narration, but the beginning is basically an extended recap of the original film.

Running time: 92 minutes, which is 92 too many

Texas Chainsaw Massacre - The End...for Now

This is pretty fucking stupid, but I actually had fun with it. It’s nice and brutal, and it’s so fucking short. But the best part is there is very little backstory and almost no attempt to expand on the lore of the family. It’s just Leatherface killing a bunch of people. It is not a good movie, but there’s nothing else this franchise should or could be at this point, so just make it like Friday the 13th and be done with it.

This is the one that started it all for this series of articles. I had not watched a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie in years (I think), and then this just suddenly appeared on Netflix. For whatever reason, this was just what I needed to spark my interest in the franchise, so much so that I decided to rewatch every film and write an article for each film followed by a definitive ranking. Looking back, I wish I had just settled on ranking the movies and writing a short blurb about each, but once I started, I felt required to finish. 

Of course, I procrastinated to the point that by the time I got to this film’s article, I needed to rewatch it to remember why I liked it so much. As a standalone horror film, I found it enjoyable, if dumb, enough. But watching all of the other films, especially the most recent shitshows, made me appreciate the gory simplicity of the film. 

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise got bogged down in building the lore of Leatherface and his fucked up family in the previous three films (easily my least favorite three movies in the nine-movie series). Texas Chainsaw Massacre actually does the same thing Texas Chainsaw did, in that it ignored every sequel and prequel and was actually a direct sequel to the first film. But Texas Chainsaw attempted to turn the cannibal family into sympathetic victims, with Leatherface being used by his long lost cousin as her personal murderer by the end. It was stupid and insulting.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre has no interest in building the mythology of the fucked up family. Instead, they go the Halloween (2018) route. Shit happened a long time ago, but the legend of that terrible time has grown while the monster has lain dormant; oh shit, the monster is back! They even brought back the lone survivor from the first film (played by Olwen Fouere taking over the role from the deceased Marilyn Burns) a la Laurie Strode from Halloween. She ends up being about as useful as Dick Hallorann in The Shining, but whatever. The point is Leatherface shows up and people die horribly. 

That’s all I want from this exhausting series. I don’t care about expanding the lore of the family, and I damn sure don’t want them turned into victims. They were fucked up, and they did fucked up shit. A woman running an orphanage took pity on Leatherface and took him in…and kept his chainsaw in a wall…

Okay, this movie is pretty fucking stupid, too. The whole premise of the movie is a group of influencers decide to buy almost the entire downtown area of the town close to the first film’s events. The idea that you can just make a few TikTok videos and convince dozens of people to buy up property in a ghost town in the middle of nowhere is idiotic. If there were enough people around to sustain a thriving downtown, it would already be thriving. Just sinking money into an old building won’t create a population of people with money to spend. Those people already live in places like the one they’re trying to create. (The opening narration tries to fix this by claiming the town is “just a few miles outside of Austin” but I call bullshit. If it’s so close to Austin, where all these dickheads are presumably from, then why is the drive so far that they have to charter a bus to bring people there? And why is a town so close to Austin so fucking dead?)

It’s a flimsy plot, but the whole point of it is to make fun of these influencers as they get cut to pieces in a party bus, and I’m okay with it. Perhaps the filmmakers thought they were making a statement about this generation, especially when they start livestreaming their own murders (with people commenting that it all looks fake), if so it was drowned out by the sound of a chainsaw disemboweling someone. 

There’s also the subplot of the main character being a mass shooting survivor that doesn’t get any kind of meaningful resolution, aside from her going on the attack? Or embracing assault rifles? I suppose the point was she got past her PTSD, but it’s not she’s not going to be fucked up for life after surviving the events of this movie. So the point is there are worse things to survive than a school shooting? This is just too sensitive a topic to bring into a goofy chainsaw gorefest movie. Don’t give me Leatherface killing a bunch of  morons in an Insta Story, and then ask me to ruminate on mass shootings. Pick a lane.

Beyond that, I can imagine some people not being thrilled with Leatherface’s treatment in this film. He should be in his late 60s at best, but possibly in his 70s at this point. For an AARP member, he’s a bit too deadly, but whatever. The end truly crosses a line for the character as he straight up becomes a monster akin to Jason or Freddy in that he should be dead or at the very least severely injured, but he comes back and is able to decapitate someone and do his trademark crazy chainsaw dance. I don’t care, at this point, but any purists will have issues with this. 

The original film is not a slasher film. It’s not meant to be a franchise, despite Leatherface making for an iconic horror character. There was nothing supernatural about the fucked up family, including Leatherface, in the original film. Sure, his strength became amplified in subsequent movies, but he wasn’t blatantly supernatural. Here, there has to be something beyond reality happening for him to still be alive at the end. Once again, I don’t care because this series has become an exhaustive mess, but this is not in keeping with the original at all.

And that’s why I actually like it more than most of the other films in the series. There’s no point in trying to make a film like the original. So fuck it, turn Leatherface into Jason, and let him loose on a bunch of fuckheads. There’s a Friday the 13th void in my life right now, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre filled it. If the Friday the 13th series was still active, perhaps I would have hated this silly movie. But it isn’t, so I don’t. Watching this whole motherfucking franchise has taught me that it’s pointless to get up in arms about these movies. Texas Chainsaw broke me, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre put me back together.

But I still hope this is the end of the franchise, despite the after credits scene of Leatherface returning to the house. I know there will be more because this series seems as unkillable as Leatherface himself, even if the last two movies were released direct to streaming (ish, since 2017’s Leatherface was technically released directly to…uh…DirecTV). Hopefully the tepid critical response at least leaves the series dormant for a while, because I certainly want to be done with the franchise for the time being.

Leatherface - I Don't Care About These Movies at All Anymore

I had no clue this movie existed until I decided to write about the entire series. I really didn’t want to watch it, especially when I found out it was a prequel about a teenage Leatherface. So I’m not going to be fair to this movie. It’s actually okay, but I didn’t want it. It’s somehow worse than the prequel to the remake to me for no other reason than that I’m tired of the series. But I said I’d write about all these fucking movies, so here goes.

This film is a prequel to the original and also Texas Chainsaw. You’d think this would mean I would be interested in it because Texas Chainsaw left me with so many questions about the dead, rich aunt, who is played by Lily Tomlin in this one. But this movie just made that film even dumber. It’s revealed that the aunt is basically the leader of the family, encouraging the killing they do. 

This is stupid to me because if she was gung-ho about all the killing, then why did she just gather up Leatherface and keep him locked up in her basement later on? If she’s this stone cold killer matriarch, wouldn’t she immediately seek revenge? Instead, she lives a quiet life in her mansion, waiting for her long lost niece to take over once she dies. It’s fucking stupid and is not in keeping with the character presented here. Because this family is not the type for long-term plans. They just kill whenever they fucking feel like it, and get away with it for a while somehow.

Putting that aspect of the film aside and just forgetting about Texas Chainsaw (which is for the best), Leatherface then becomes the origin of the titular character. Rather than being genetically inclined to murder like Alexandra Daddario in the last movie (I can’t forget that fucking movie!), this Leatherface has to be fucked up into becoming a maimed killer. 

Leatherface is presented as a kid who just seems to attract murder. He’s born into a murderous family, so there’s that. He’s taken away and sent to a mental institute for troubled kids. When he’s a teenager, a murderous riot takes place, and he’s taken hostage by a dumbass Bonnie and Clyde type from the institution. They go on the road, killing everywhere they go. This kid is a fucking magnet for murder!

None of this was interesting to me, or to the writers, it seems, because they used a time jump to create a needless mystery to the film. Leatherface gets taken away when he’s very little, and then the movie jumps ten years to the institution, where all the kids have different names (so parents can’t track them down, for some reason?). Because of this, we technically don’t know which of the kids on the run is the future Leatherface. This whodunit aspect just annoyed me. Not only did I not need to know why Leatherface became a killer, but I definitely didn’t need a lame ass guessing game to go along with it. By the time the real Leatherface was revealed, I just wanted the movie to end.

Obviously, I was not in the right mindset for this film. But I wasn’t alone in my disinterest in the franchise. This movie was released on DirecTv exclusively in 2017 after being shelved by Lionsgate for a year. Lionsgate had originally bought the rights to the series with a potential six films planned, but due to delays with the previous film and this film, they only made two. And they dumped this onto DirecTv, which I didn’t even realize was a thing studios did. It was like releasing a movie straight to streaming before it was really a thing. In that way, this movie is a trailblazer. But what it really means is that people were sick of this franchise, or at least sick of the direction it was going. That was certainly the case for me.