Texas Chainsaw Massacre Review: Leatherface Returns To Netflix This Film Satisfy Your Thirst
Starring: Sarah Yarkin, Elsie Fisher, Mark Burnham
Director: David Blue Garcia
Streaming Platform: Netflix (click to watch)
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3/5 (three star) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Texas Chainsaw Massacre Review: The sequels are not and should never be taken for granted, especially when it comes to historical franchises and even the requels made famous by the last Scream get in the way. Staying in the horror field we have also seen the rebirth in this sense of the Halloween franchise , documented in the review of Halloween Kills , but what we will talk about now has much more cumbersome roots that go back to 1974 , four years before Carpenter and Craven, who will draw a lot of inspiration for their next films.
We obviously refer to what is perhaps the most seminal work for contemporary horror, to that Texas Chainsaw Massacre by Tobe Hooper which follows in importance and influence only The Night of the Living Dead in cinematography from New Hollywood onwards an impact comparable to that made by Murnau’s Nosferatu or by Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet in the silent years. You will understand, therefore, that a new film of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which already has almost a dozen sequels, including reboots and prequels, did not immediately enthuse the fans, however enticed by the message of Netflix and Legendary Pictures about a direct sequel to the original which, a bit like happened with the last Halloween, ideally pretends to make a clean sweep and to act as the direct heir of the cult of the seventies. An operation that in this way avoids having to deal with the disaster of Texas Chainsaw Massacre at the timeline level, and of which we will definitely take into account in this review.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre Review: The Story
We’re back, of course, in Texas and four friends are traveling to the town of Harlow to present their business venture to potential investors. In fact, two of them, Dante and Melody, are famous influencers who want to expand their success. Dante is traveling with his girlfriend and Melody is followed, somewhat reluctantly, by her sister Lila, the most introverted and with a shock that she has yet to process. Arriving in the town of Harlow they realize that it is a ghost town, ruined and bare, except for the presence of a woman, with a mysterious man, unable to speak, beside her who does not want to leave his home. A series of events will cause the death of the woman and the painful awakening of the urges of her protégé who turns out to be Leatherface, Leather face. Meanwhile, 1973 survivor Sally Hardesty, now a Texan ranger, is in search of the serial killer and is ready to avenge her friends and brother. After fifty years of searching, she is about to fulfill her long awaited desire for her.
Without wishing to spoil the implications of the thin plot, we can say that the writing of Do not open that door belongs to the zero degree of commitment. Not so much for the plot that, in some way, fans of the genre will be enough, as for the mixture and the succession of situations and events that seem to happen almost driven by a superior force, without taking into account the construction of a minimum dramaturgical tension. Starting from the premises, up to the conclusion of the events, the film accumulates extreme and increasingly absurd situations (with characters miraculously alive when they should be more than dead) that highlight the banality and superficiality of the script. It also follows certain emptiness in the setting, more like a theatrical scenography than a real place to get lost in. Furthermore, the direction, net of a few successful shots, fails to build the winning atmosphere, giving life to a film that is too glossy and constructed. There remains only the enormous amount of blood and malice that overflows on the screen that will make the lovers of gore and splatter happy, although it remains to be asked, at this point, how we can so safely speak of a canonical sequel.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre Review and Analysis
The work directed by Hooper is a true progenitor of the genre because it contains the seeds of the modern slasher, as well as a ferocious satire of America in the seventies, the rural south and, by extension, the whole of the United States. A perfectly balanced satire between brutality and black humor. A balance that Hooper declines in a delightful way to offer the portrait of the horrors hidden behind the apparent security and perfection of the American lifestyle. The family victim in some way of industrial capitalism that has even evolved the slaughtering processes of animals, making a profession practiced for decades obsolete, orienting it towards cannibalism towards the unfortunates who arrived near their home, it is an extreme evolution of that path that began a decade ago and resulted entirely in the character of Leatherface , the mentally disabled son who hides his insecurity and his condition behind a mask of human skin , fearful of his relatives, killing anyone who enters his home.
Netflix’s operation temporally takes place decades after the events of the first film which only Sally Hardesty had survived, managed to escape from the cannibal family in a scene that has entered the history of cinema, which saw Leatherface despair by spinning his chainsaw in the sunset. However, Sally’s conquest led her to develop over the years a real obsession for the murderer of her brother and her friends, victims of that Texas Chainsaw Massacre that now stands out on the gadgets for sale in service stations.
The woman, meanwhile, has become a sheriff and has dedicated her life to hunting Leatherface, but nothing has been heard of him over the decades. Incredibly, however, the focus of this film does not envisage integrating the character of Sally in a constructive and reasoned way, condemning this narrative stratagem to a pure and utilitarian fan service , which is certainly not with the passing of the baton to the new protagonist who assumes a own dramaturgical dignity.
Yes, because the real actors of this new film produced by Legendary Pictures are a group of influencers determined to revive a ghost town in Texas by making money on the sale of real estate. Too bad that Harlow has been hiding a dormant threat for decades that will obviously be awakened and drown in blood anyone who comes in his path. Unfortunately this new Texas Chainsaw Massacre, despite its linear narrative and perfectly suited to the genre, almost completely forgets its own heritage, somehow annihilating the Leatherface back story without making us participate in any way in the developments that led to this situation.
From a fragile and deviant expression of an existential and mental unease, as well as of certain socio-economic consequences, the iconic villain with the chainsaw turns into the relentless antagonist slasher that with the necessary changes of context and setting could very well be comparable to Michael Myers or Jason Voohrees, with the difference that the latter are born as such from script. An entity that embodies absolute evil instead of deviant humanity capable of equally disturbing emotions; a silent and invincible enemy. We find something better on the front of the protagonists, although it is all too functional to the puzzle of events and situations that Chris Thomas Devlin’s screenplay tries to hide behind the criticism of weapons with the character of Lila, a survivor of the massacre in a high school, or to the social chef Dante, whose racial question does not go beyond the politically correct surface.
Even the merchandising of pain is something already seen and declined in a completely unrealistic way, when Scream 2 had already thought about sinking the blade into the topic more effectively. The culmination of this diorama designed ad hoc to exploit the roots of the franchise born from Hooper’s film, however, is the dusting off of the character that belonged to Marilyn Burns (not present in the cast for the simple fact that she disappeared in 2014), that Sally Hardesty who, to stay on topic with the comparison with the Scream saga, it does not reach the peaks reached by the return of the original cast of the fifth chapter of the Craven franchise.
A real shame that from the point of view of the script this sequel to direct has only the intention and the will to revive a successful franchise, not even trying to establish that balance between black humor, horror and satire that had been the trademark of Hooper, but deciding to lean towards the pure slasher, if we can define it that way. While the direction of David Blue Garcia manages to keep up with the most gore and splatter passages (yes, fans of the genre will find bread for their teeth, without censorship whatsoever), it proves to be quite of service in the other junctures, as well as the performance of the whole cast. A wasted opportunity, a suffering in some way for those who loved and understood the intellectual honesty of the original work, which was certainly not lacking in inventiveness and symbolism in the staging . The only certainty that remains is that we are only at the beginning of a new era for this saga, but the conditions are certainly not the best.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre Review: The Last Words
If you are looking for a horror like many others to entertain you in your evenings with the lights out, then Texas Chainsaw Massacre Netflix will be able to satisfy your thirst for blood on celluloid; between dismemberments and a relentless Leatherface, you will get an experience that does not differ much from what you could experience with many other titles of the same genre or the same franchise. If, like many fans and fans of the saga, you are instead looking for the much declaimed direct sequel capable of updating and evolving the themes of the original film, you will soon find yourself not understanding some of the narrative and dramaturgical choices of the film, that of the value, thematic and the formal work of which it is professed undisputed following, to the point of canceling the other films in the franchise, contains very little; just an ounce of fan service.
