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"Texas Chainsaw Massacre" dir. by David Blue Garcia


"Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (2022)

I saw the original TCM when I was 4 years old (not even joking). Naturally, I found it very frightening. Its haunting imagery would manifest in nightmares for many of my childhood years. When I was in my teens, I revisited the original film after seeing the 2003 remake, which for the record I think is great. While some of the classic moments in the original held up on this second viewing, it did admittedly feel a little dated and poorly constructed. I definitely was at this point more partial to the remake.

As I continued down a path of endless horror movies, I of course worked my way through all of the entries in the TCM franchise. Even though I really wanted to love them, I found most of the movies clunky, boring and uninspired.

This film is no exception, sadly.

This sequel to the original follows a group of hipsters trying to gentrify a ghost town somewhere in the American South (Texas, I think). That's about as far as "story" goes with this film. Every single character you meet is awful and annoying. It becomes clear after 10 minutes that this thing is just an excuse to watch a bunch of hipsters get slaughtered. There may have been some sort of attempt at a message about gentrification and maybe gun control/school shootings (?) but it was definitely lost in the stupidity of everything else going on.

One of my many complaints about "Halloween Kills" was that they created characters that pushed the limits of stupidity and faulty logic to an unprecedented extremity. This film violently yanks that trophy from the hands of "Halloween Kills."

I strained a muscle in my neck from constantly shaking my head in disappointment.

The acting is pretty much what you would expect from a straight to Netflix TCM remake with a bunch of young unknown talent. One thing it does have going for it is the gore. Still lots of CGI as is the case with every horror movie these days, but some scenes had pretty brutal and shocking stuff regardless. There was one scene in particular on a bus that really embodied the title of the movie.

It's pretty short at 1 hour and 20 minutes so if you are a fan of the series and you like senseless gore/violence and can cope with the frustration of watching characters make dumb decision after dumb decision, I suppose it's worth giving a shot.

4/10 

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