Here we go again...
After the success of the most recent HALLOWEEN sequels comes this latest unnecessary attempt at reviving the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE franchise. All it is is more of the same in the guise of a quasi-sequel, which makes little sense because if it follows fifty years after the original, which is the stated case, Leatherface would be well into his seventies. But whatever...
The setup is that this is a direct sequel to the 1974 masterpiece, retconning all of the subsequent sequels out of existence. The original film happened, and now Leatherface (Mark Burnham) lives in seclusion with an ancient lady who serves as his surrogate mother. This iteration of Leatherface bears little behavioral resemblance to the original, in that he is no longer a terrified, infantile man-child who mostly acted out of childlike fear. Now he's an indestructible murderous juggernaut of the Jason Voorhees stripe, a creative decision that reduces the once-unique bogeyman to another in the immeasurably long line of cookie cutter slashers.
Anyway, a group of incredibly annoying internet social influencers breeze into an abandoned Texas town with the intent to sell its properties to wealthy young city-slickers. One of the houses they want to sell is where Leatherface and his mama, the sole residents of the ghost town, reside, with Leatherface basically being a mentally-challenged senior citizen whom no one knows savagely decimated a van full of 20-something half a century ago. The influencers discover the pair while snooping around their house, which was presumed deserted, and tell the old lady that she and her special needs charge have to leave, no ifs, ands, or buts, unless the old lady can produce a deed of ownership. When she cannot produce a deed, the old lady works herself into a state that triggers a heart attack, and she soon dies in the ambulance on the way to a hospital. Leatherface is next to her when she expires, and once she's gone the monster within him awakens. What follows is super-graphic charnel house cinema with nothing on its mind other than placing chainsaw fodder in Leatherface's path. Oh, and Sally Hardesty, the ultra-traumatized final girl from the 1974 film is back (recast due to Marilyn Burns having passed away in 2014), and she has spent the last 48 years searching for the killer of her brother and her friends. A final reckoning is imminent.
Other than delivering on the gore and violence (which unfortunately relies more on CGI than practical effects), this new TEXAS CHAINSAW is about as by-the-numbers as a slasher film can be, and if it had come out during the '80's heyday of the sub-genre, it would only be distinguished from the legion of like films by its famous title. The characters are nearly all annoying, so we have a cast that I actively wanted to see die horribly from the moment they arrived in town, and in that I was not disappointed. Leatherface fucking goes to town on all and sundry, and if that is all that you came for, you will be satisfied. It just would have been nice if all of the carnage had been a part of a narrative that was in any way scary or suspenseful. The only thing of note is a great bit where Leatherface kills about a score of people who are trapped on a charter bus. If I had seen this in a theater, I guarantee you that the audience would have gone apeshit berserk during that sequence. (Too bad Brooklyn's Court Street Stadium 12 recently went under. The audiences there were hilarious during films of this ilk.)
When you live in New York City and regularly take the MTA buses, this sort of this is just another day. In a deserted town in bumfuck Texas, not so much.
If you come to it with low expectations, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2022 a passable way to kill 83 minutes and it is gory as fuck, but there is zero suspense and at no point is it actually scary. It also clearly sets itself up for a sequel, despite Leatherface somehow surviving two back-to-back shotgun blasts to the chest at point blank range. Leatherface is a normal human, not Jason Vorhees, so that was just idiotic.
Lastly, it also rips off elements of the HALLOWEEN reboot from a couple of years back, namely having Sally Hardesty still be alive and seeking vengeance/closure, just like Jamie Lee Curtis in the last two HALLOWEEN flicks. I’ve certainly seen worse, but this is basically just another rote bloodbath in a series that should have been put out to pasture after the second installment.
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