Netflix’s ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ Sequel Is Just Another Hackneyed Slasher

Tony Sokol

Tobe Hooper’s original “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” worked because it had a low-budget, no-frills, documentary feel. The film billed itself as being based on a true story, and the actors looked like they were picked up off a regular Texas side street at random. The film opens with a narration explaining the “the tragedy which befell a group of five youths” led to the discovery “of one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history.” John Larroquette gravely intoned the gruesome findings of the police, while grainy photographs told a deeper story. The original film was loosely on the killings of Ed Gein, a real-life multiple murderer who also inspired the films “Psycho” (1960) and “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991). Larroquette returns to open David Blue Garcia’s new “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” sequel, as does Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouréré), the “final girl” who survived Leatherface, but his scene is the only one in the new film which teases Hooper’s masterful work. 

The ninth film in the long-running horror franchise does not tone down its violence for Netflix, but it switches off the realism. Part reboot and part sequel, the new movie siphons buckets of blood through broken glass, tire irons, sledge hammers, head-on car impacts, and, of course, the trusty chainsaw. It needs oil, one of the few actual suspenseful moments in the gorefest comes when it is ripped out of the wall which protected the town from it. It takes more than a few pulls to get it started.

“I wish I knew you all were coming, I’d have put my face on,” we hear from the old lady, Mrs. Mc (Alice Krige), being run out of her residence as caretaker of the local orphanage, and for an all-too brief moment, we get the false hope of comic relief. But no, this film goes for serious scares, and the creepy old lady is actually not the bad guy here, it is Melody (Sarah Yarkin), her chef partner Dante (Jacob Latimore), and his fiancé Lila (Elsie Fisher), the wealthy usurpers turning her ghost town into a mecca of opportunity for hipsters wanting to “build a better world.” Change is scary. Gentrification goes two ways.

The film is set in the present day, 50 years after the original incidents, in the Texas town of Harlow, and the social updates all get duly noted. Elsie Fisher’s Lila is a survivor of a school shooting but it is ultimately just another massacre in her life. Mrs. Mc gets canceled for displaying a confederate flag. Richter (Moe Dunford), the good old boy who loves to spew diesel, gets canceled for saying the new rich kids on the block are just a cult. The cult aspect would have been more interesting, and when he repeats it, he appears to be revealing an underlying plot development with dire conspiratorial suspense. It doesn’t come. Don’t wait for it. He takes one look in the mirror and goes down for the count. At least he gets the motor running on the chainsaw.

The only reason Sally became a Texas Ranger with a lifelong obsession to take down Leatherface is because Jamie Lee Curtis did it in the 2018 reboot of John Carpenter’s “Halloween.” The original Leatherface, played by Gunnar Hansen, was a bit of a morning cartoon comic foil. Here, Mark Burnham’s Leatherface has grown up into a sad old man, who just lost his mama, and has to keep up a brave face. In this case, a Porky Pig mask, but we hope he’ll replace it for anyone else’s he might slash off along the way. 

Leatherface isn’t sympathetic, like they tried to make him in “Texas Chainsaw 3D” and “Leatherface,” or as he naturally was in the original. Here, he’s just another serial killer with a wood chipper on his shoulder. We may cheer as he lops off the limbs of the investors on the tour bus, but it’s just more of the same. Much more. “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” mainly suggested gore, which made it more frightening. There are gallons more in this remake. But it is just forgettable. Movies about Texas chainsaw massacres should not be made with big budgets. This is shot on old style cameras, but it’s done more for vintage value, like the real-estate flipping hipsters in the movie. The new “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” sequel catches the same old blood. 

“Texas Chainsaw Massacre” begins streaming Feb. 18 on Netflix.