On October 1, 1974, first-time filmmaker Tobe Hooper released a film so visceral and psychologically disturbing that it was banned in several countries. The terror that the original iteration of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre wrought upon the public still hangs in the air nearly 50 years later, despite the lack of explicit gore and violence. While cannibalism and dismemberments are what the other installments in the franchise chose to focus on, the original TCM is first and foremost a social commentary. It’s about the plight of the rural working class in the 1970s, a story of an impoverished family forgotten by the government forced to return to their base, animal instincts to survive.
David Blue Garcia’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the newest in a line of legacy sequels to classic horror franchises. Much like Halloween (2018) and Scream (2022), the film aims to link together characters and themes from the original with problems and counterparts from the modern day. However, David Gordon Green and Radio Silence actually understood what made their original movies work and properly integrated their franchises’ original final girls seamlessly with the new generation. Alas, Texas Chainsaw fans are left with the definition of half-baked: too many attempts at surface-level social commentary with random references to other films in the franchise and mediocre practical effects. Whether it be from the laundry list of production issues or a genuine misunderstanding of the source material, Texas Chainsaw Massacre is nothing short of a mess.
The film follows Mel (Sarah Yarkin), her sister Lila (Elsie Fisher), Mel’s coworker Dante (Jacob Latimore), and his fiancee Ruth (Nell Hudson): four San Francisco residents who recently bought most of the land in the ghost town of Harlow, Texas, with the intent of a massive gentrification project. Upon parking their Tesla, the four spot a Confederate flag hanging on an old orphanage. The owner, Ginny (Alice Krige), refuses to vacate and, upon being asked to remove the flag, has a heart attack. Leatherface (Mark Burnham) makes his first proper appearance moments later, slaughtering the riders in a makeshift ambulance. In the film’s centerpiece scene, Leatherface proceeds to slaughter an entire party bus in graphic and gory detail, leaving only two of the prospective Harlow residents to fight him. Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré), now a retired Ranger, finally re-introduces herself and fights Leatherface alongside the two survivors. The film ends with a patented surprise ending kill and a choppy edit of Leatherface’s famous chainsaw dance.
Despite being marketed as a legacy film, there is surprisingly little legacy in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Sally is in the film for, at maximum, half an hour, and her entire presence could be removed with little impact. She has no connection to the new characters and, until hearing Ruth’s final words, is completely removed from the town; she’s not like Laurie who always knew that Michael would return, nor does she personally reference any emotional impact from the deaths in the original, not even that of her own brother Franklin. Apart from Sally’s brief screen time, the photo Nubbins (Edwin Neal) took of her and her friends in the original that she inexplicably has, a quick homage to Pretty Lady Leatherface, and the opening narration by John Larroquette — probably the high point of the film — the film barely touches on the original. There are some weirdly placed, half-done homages to Lieutenant Lefty Enright (Dennis Hopper) from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, who is meant to be Sally’s uncle. While it was nice to see a possible acknowledgement of the usually skipped-over film, the references are so “blink and you miss it” that it’s difficult to tell if they were intentional.
Other legacy films try to wind together the old final girl with the new generation with social issues that make sense for the modern day and for the characters. The new Halloween films went with generational trauma, which adds an interesting dynamic to how the three generations of Strode women interact with each other pre- and post-Michael Myers’ return. Scream serves as a parody of legacy sequels, in true Scream fashion, as well as a commentary on the ethics of true crime. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, an extremely political film, should’ve laid the perfect groundwork for issues to tackle, especially since the poor Southern working class experience hasn’t drastically improved in the last 50 years.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it seems, decided to pull random social issues from a hat and try to incorporate them with little rhyme or reason. Lila is a survivor of a school shooting, which is brought up exactly three times: once to explain why she’s on the trip, once when Lila is speaking to local handyman Richter (Moe Dunford) about her fear of guns, and once when Lila sees all the dead bodies on the party bus and has a one-second flashback. The depth that the trauma of a school shooting should be acknowledged with is eschewed completely; her unwillingness to fight or shoot a gun could’ve been explained away without invalidating the trauma of thousands of school shooting survivors.
The other issue tackled is gentrification, which is more in line with the franchise, to the film’s credit. But, once again, nuance is removed, and instead the film decides to delve into the stereotype of poor Southerners being inherently bigoted and backwards. Richter and Ginny, the two remaining residents of Harlow, are both horrifically bigoted people: Ginny with her refusal to take down the Confederate flag, and Richter who acts passive-aggressive about doing so, along with both characters’ behavior towards Dante. The four main characters aren’t much better; they never cease to insult how the abandoned Harlow is a waste of space and needs improvement, without an ounce of self-reflection. There’s also the now infamous clip of the other rich Californians on the party bus threatening to cancel Leatherface with literally no prompting. None of the characters in the film contain an ounce of nuance, either being classist or racist, gun-toting rednecks, and there is really nobody to root for nor empathize with. As a supposed successor to a film with an actually nuanced portrayal of an impoverished Southern family, its choice to superficially tackle gentrification feels disingenuous.
Honestly, I wish I could’ve quit comparing Texas Chainsaw Massacre to both its predecessor and other legacy sequels of recent years, but the further I got in the film, the more I wished I was watching any of those instead. Genuinely referring to this as a “legacy film” is a disservice to Tobe Hooper, Marilyn Burns, Gunnar Hansen, and anyone, living or deceased, involved in the original film. The film is truly soulless; it fails at being an effective horror sequel, a legacy film, and any kind of social commentary. It’s just random plot points and some half-decent kills thrown in a blender with chopped human remains. The magic of what made the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre an effectively brutal horror film upon release and 50 years later is lost.
