All Blood, No Bite in the New ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’

All Blood, No Bite in the New ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre‘

The Netflix slasher follows a disturbing trend in horror: “legacy sequels” that fall short of capturing what made the original films so memorable.

Even by the short yardstick of the horror genre, the idea of the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre is pretty straightforward. Some young people going through rural Texas come find a run-down house where a cannibal family lives. With a chainsaw, Leatherface, a violent, childish member of the clan wearing a human skin mask, assaults them (among other weapons). That’s all there is to it. Because of its vérité technique, which makes the viewing experience feel uncomfortably close to reality: hot and panic-inducing, Tobe Hooper’s 1974 film is as brutal today as it was decades ago.

Of course, if a horror film is even a minor hit, it will inevitably be followed by a sequel, even if it’s cheesy direct-to-video schlock. If it has the same type of lasting impact as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the sequels will be endless.
Since the first film’s release, eight more Texas Chainsaw films have appeared: three sequels that played to diminishing returns; then a remake that spawned its own prequel; then a 3-D sequel to the original, which led to another prequel; and now Netflix’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the latest attempt to connect to the first film’s appeal.

Spoiler alert: It fails miserably. Almost every low-budget horror film that launched a franchise (think Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and even Saw) had a lightning-in-a-bottle aspect that was tough to duplicate. Those shows have had a lot of nerdy fun attempting to build an universe around a masked killer, but elaborating on the villain’s reasons usually takes away from his terrifying mystery. With so much Texas Chainsaw mythology to wade through, each new entry must pick and choose what to keep and what to leave out of previous films, rather than attempting to maintain narrative consistency.

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Directed by David Blue Garcia and written by Chris Thomas Devlin, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (there’s no The this time) is a comparable option to David Gordon Green’s 2018 Halloween. It’s a “legacy sequel” to the original film that rejects all previous versions in an attempt to start over, reboot the franchise, and pay honor to its forefather. Garcia’s film feels unnecessary and anonymous, leaning on crass visual shocks while failing to match the unsparing brutality of its lodestar. While Green’s film largely succeeded on all of those fronts, becoming a smash hit, Garcia’s feels unnecessary and anonymous, leaning on crass visual shocks while failing to match the unsparing brutality of its lodestar.

The 1974 film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is shockingly bloodless. (Hilariously, Hooper hoped for a PG rating by reducing the onscreen gore; the Motion Picture Association deservedly gave it an R rating.) But it’s unrelenting and intense; the reason Sally Hardesty (played by Marilyn Burns) and her friends are being held hostage by Leatherface’s family is never revealed, and the mansion they stumble into looks like a filthy slaughterhouse, its vileness literally wafting off the screen. Garcia’s new Texas Chainsaw Massacre, on the other hand, makes an odd attempt to present its victims as (perhaps unsuspecting) adversaries. They’re Austin transplants on their way to a small Texas hamlet to claim a run-down property as part of a gentrification scam. When they evict the home’s owner without thinking, Leatherface comes up and revs his chainsaw in retaliation.

It’s difficult to tell how concerned Leatherface is about gentrification. After all, he’s a mute colossus with a human-flesh mask who’s always approached new individuals with a “chainsaw first, ask questions later” attitude. However, the clumsy explanation that the youngsters he’s after (played by Sarah Yarkin, Elsie Fisher, Jacob Latimore, Jessica Allain, and Nell Hudson) are morally infringing on his turf saps the intensity of the subsequent mayhem. Garcia is likewise adamant about not letting up on the gore. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has extensive, digitally produced saw cuts that are far more terrifying and physically weird than any cosmetics could manage. The CGI blood spurts are too artificial, and these impressive-looking kills lack heft.

This sequel’s “legacy” elements are also embarrassingly lacking. Leatherface is meant to be the same character from the first film, just decades older, as performed by Mark Burnham. Gunnar Hansen, the original actor, died in 2015, and this replacement portrayal adds nothing to suggest much inner depth; past Texas Chainsaw films made a bit greater effort to explain why Leatherface became such a monster. Sally, the lone survivor of the 1974 film, is also included in the new film; Burns died in 2014, thus the character was recast with Olwen Fouéré, who only appears in a few moments and has little to do.

The film tries half-heartedly to match Jamie Lee Curtis’ reappearance in the new Halloween films, but it can’t do more than hint at the concept. Of course, this newest fiasco will have little impact on the franchise’s heritage; sooner or later, another attempt to resurrect Leatherface will emerge. However, each attempt simply adds to the enigma of the original: Its delights, as simple as they may appear, cannot be duplicated.