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.
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