The premise of the unique Texas Chain Noticed Bloodbath is, even by the quick yardstick of the horror style, fairly easy. Some youths touring by means of rural Texas come throughout a ramshackle home the place a household of cannibals stay. Leatherface, a brutish, childlike member of the clan sporting a masks made from human pores and skin, assaults them with a chainsaw (amongst different weapons). That’s just about it. Tobe Hooper’s 1974 movie is as brutal right this moment because it was many years in the past due to its vérité type, which makes the viewing expertise really feel uncomfortably near actuality: sweaty and panic-inducing.
After all, if a horror movie is even a light success, it can’t be left to face alone; finally a sequel will observe, even when it’s direct-to-video schlock. If it makes the form of unforgettable affect that The Texas Chain Noticed Bloodbath did, the follow-ups won’t ever finish. For the reason that first movie’s launch, eight extra Texas Chainsaw movies have appeared: three sequels that performed to diminishing returns; then a remake that spawned its personal prequel; then a 3-D sequel to the unique, which led to one other prequel; and now Netflix’s Texas Chainsaw Bloodbath, the most recent try to hook up with the primary movie’s attraction.
Spoiler alert: It doesn’t succeed. Virtually each cheaply made horror masterpiece that generated an entire cinematic universe (assume Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Road, and even Noticed) had a lightning-in-a-bottle high quality that proved inconceivable to mimic. These collection have had loads of nerdy enjoyable making an attempt to world-build round a masked assassin, however elaborating on the villain’s motivations usually steals the thunder from his fearsome thriller. Now, with so many many years of Texas Chainsaw lore to sift by means of, each new entry should decide and select what to maintain and what to neglect from prior movies, fairly than vying for narrative consistency.
Texas Chainsaw Bloodbath (there’s no The this time), directed by David Blue Garcia and written by Chris Thomas Devlin, makes an identical option to David Gordon Inexperienced’s 2018 Halloween. It’s a “legacy sequel” to the unique movie that ignores each different model, making an attempt to wipe the slate clear, reboot the collection, and pay homage to its forebear. Whereas Inexperienced’s movie largely succeeded on all these fronts, turning into a smash hit, Garcia’s feels pointless and nameless, leaning on crass visible shocks whereas failing to match the unsparing brutality of its lodestar.
The Texas Chain Noticed Bloodbath of 1974 is a surprisingly cold movie. (Hilariously, Hooper hoped it would get a PG score by limiting the onscreen gore; the Movement Image Affiliation justly rated it R.) However it’s relentless and intense; why Sally Hardesty (performed by Marilyn Burns) and her pals are underneath violent siege by Leatherface’s household is rarely actually defined, and the house they blunder into appears to be like like a dank slaughterhouse, its nastiness virtually wafting off the display. In distinction, Garcia’s new Texas Chainsaw Bloodbath makes a baffling effort to solid its victims as (considerably unwitting) antagonists. They’re Austin transplants touring to a small city in Texas to say a derelict property as a part of some gentrification scheme. After they thoughtlessly evict the house’s proprietor, Leatherface exhibits up and revs his chainsaw in revenge.
To what extent Leatherface truly cares about gentrification is tough to parse. He’s, in any case, a mute colossus sporting a human-flesh masks who’s lengthy taken a “chainsaw first, ask questions later” method to assembly new individuals. However the ham-fisted clarification that the children he’s after (performed by Sarah Yarkin, Elsie Fisher, Jacob Latimore, Jessica Allain, and Nell Hudson) are morally trespassing on his territory robs the following mayhem of its energy. Garcia can be unwilling to ease off the gore. Texas Chainsaw Bloodbath is filled with elaborate, digitally created noticed wounds way more stunning and anatomically weird than something that could possibly be achieved by means of make-up. These impressive-looking kills, nevertheless, haven’t any heft; the CGI blood spurts are too synthetic.
The “legacy” points of this sequel additionally fall embarrassingly flat. Leatherface, performed by Mark Burnham right here, is meant to be the identical character as within the first movie, solely many years older. The unique actor, Gunnar Hansen, died in 2015, and this new efficiency provides nothing to counsel a lot inside depth; different Texas Chainsaw entries made barely extra effort to elucidate why Leatherface turned such a monster. The brand new movie additionally options Sally, the lone survivor of the 1974 movie; Burns died in 2014, so the position is recast with Olwen Fouéré, who seems in only some scenes and will get little to do.
The movie is half-heartedly making an attempt to duplicate the success of Jamie Lee Curtis’s return within the new Halloween movies, however it will possibly’t do greater than nod on the concept. After all, the franchise’s legacy will stay principally unchanged by this newest flop; quickly sufficient, certainly, another try will spring as much as carry again Leatherface. However every effort solely provides to the unique’s mystique: So simple as its thrills may appear, they will’t be replicated.
