Texas Chainsaw Massacre – The Most Brutally Violent Movies in the Franchise
Director: David Blue Garcia
Writer: Chris Thomas Devlin (Screenplay) Fede Alvarez, Rodo Sayagues (Story)
Starring: Sarah Yarkin, Elsie Fisher, Mark Burnham, Jacob Latimore, Moe Dunford, Olwen Fourere, Jessica Allain
Plot: After nearly 50 years of hiding, Leatherface returns to terrorize a group of idealistic young friends who accidentally disrupt his carefully shielded world in a remote Texas town.
Tagline – In 1974, The World Witnessed One of the Most Bizarre Crimes in the Annals of American History. In 2022, The Face of Madness Returns.
Runtime: 1 Hour 21 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Texas Chainsaw Massacre starts when four friends Melody (Yarkin), Lila (Fisher), Dante (Latimore) and Ruth (Hudson) are heading to the famous old town of Harlow in an attempt to sell the properties in a redevelopment program.
When the group find one house still having residents, they unwittingly release the long time hidden Letherface (Burnham) on the guests, leading to the lone survivor of the original attacks Sally Hardesty (Fouere) looking to finish off the man who butchered her friends’ decades before.
Thoughts on Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Characters & Performances – Lila is the lone survivor of a mass shooting, not knowing her place in the world anymore, her sister tries to help, but deep down, she just doesn’t know where she fits in, wanting her own independence. Melody is the louder sister of Lila’s, she is always pushing her to start a new life, while not being afraid to push strangers buttons the wrong way, she seems to be the one that wants to have the must human nature towards someone. Dante is the man leading the auction of the property, he wants to lead the change, not caring who he steps over to make it happen. These three make up three quarters of the friend’s group, as Ruth gets no development at all. Leatherface is the iconic killer in the franchise, and he gets a fresh lick of paint here, hiding from the world, until he is unleashed and even deadlier than ever. Bringing the original survivor in Sally Hardesty down for a showdown with the killer is something many other franchises have done before, only this does end up failing to capture the suffering she has been through. The performances in this film are solid enough, it doesn’t help that the character decisions are the typical stupid horror ones, despite Mark Burnham making a physical presence of Leatherface.
Story – The story in Texas Chainsaw Massacre looks to bring a group of redevelopers to the same small town to rebuild the town to its former glory, only to find themselves unwittingly unleashing Leatherface once again. The film does try to bring the balance of dealing with being the lone survivor, into the battle, only not using that as enough motivation, bringing the original survivor back, only for a weak showdown and leaving plenty of loose ends around what could have been happening between the two films. In the case of a pure slasher that we would have expected through the bloodshed, this is everything you would expect, a tiny story, that is more about seeing how many bodies the killer can leave behind him.
Themes – Texas Chainsaw Massacre will bring us one of the bloodiest versions of Letherface in years, with some of the most relentless kills put into this world, with one particular chaotic sequence sticking out more than any other. Bringing the action back to the original small town, being miles from any other, will help show how he has been hidden for so long, but otherwise, the chaos brutality of this movie is what will make you come back.
Final Thoughts – Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a truly brutal experience, with the violence on overdrive.
