Texas Chainsaw Massacre streams on Netflix on Feb. 18, 2022.
It'd take a college semester to inform those who aren't Leatherface superfans how we've gotten to 2022's Texas Chainsaw Massacre. David Blue Garcia's entry, the ninth one in the southern slaughterhouse franchise, retcons everything except Tobe Hooper's 1974 original, so forget Matthew McConaughey's maniac and Alexandra Daddario tripping over that comically short fence. It's a cocky move by producers and credited story creators Fede Alvarez & Rodo Sayagues, who boast proper credentials after their remarkable success with the 2013 “requel” Evil Dead. Texas Chainsaw Massacre positions itself as a clean restart for a franchise with legendary whiffs, but Garcia's messy-as-ever slasher isn’t even better than some of the sequels it dares to erase.
The post-millennial cast, including the Instafamous Melody (Sarah Yarkin) and her sister Lila (Elsie Fisher) — a school shooting survivor — provokes Leatherface (Mark Burnham) in Harlow, Texas, after 50 years of peaceful dormancy. As most chainsaw massacres go, victims are shuttled to the middle of rural nowhere to meet Leatherface's whirring blade. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is no different, as social media chef Dante (Jacob Latimore) charters a pimped-out bus full of investors to Harlow in hopes of gentrifying the dust bowl ghost town. Despite a few townsfolk flying their Confederate flags and holstering handguns, outsiders Melody and Lila eventually lead the show — a brutal display of violence at the expense of a script that's all gristle, no meat.
I suppose Texas Chainsaw Massacre might suffice if you like your slashers slathered in gory runoff from exposed weapon wounds. It'll never win the judge's prize like Drayton Sawyer at a chili cookoff, but will be remembered for its highlight reel of showstopping mutilation. Leatherface hammers shin bones into right angles, carves through influencers while livestreams broadcast, and punishes new-age gentrifiers who hide behind moral creeds to take over impoverished towns. Leatherface comes off as a Boomer who fights back with ill-conceived notes of sympathy — but as far as kills are considered, the movie titled "massacre" holds its promise.
A single bus sequence with casualties galore could stand as the year’s most exquisitely vile display of slasher fatalities, with all respects paid towards Garcia’s special effects teams.
It's Chris Thomas Devlin's screenplay that leaves heaps to be desired. Characters demand no investment, nor do their journeys. Lila's haunting bullet scar sparks conversations around gun violence early, only to meet the most ignorant — ill-advised at best — flip of messaging later. Even worse is the reintroduction of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre final girl Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré) as a Laurie Strode type hellbent on killing Leatherface, which couldn't be more mishandled. Both subplots feel shoehorned with advancement on the fly (one literally thrown in the trash), which tracks given how Texas Chainsaw Massacre doesn’t seem to know what it wants to say about gun violence, generational divides, or any one of the story’s many fumbled throughlines.
I understand that “reason” often comes second in graphic slasher fare — signatures in ‘70s and ‘80s midnighters — but excuses only earn passes when narratives are at least straightforward.
Production design recalls better Texas Chainsaw movies as cinematographer Ricardo Diaz captures the blistery, sweltering Lone Star heat on screen. Hunter-killer terror unfolds under sunshine strong enough to toast sunflower fields, while the abandoned town of Harlow feels claustrophobic and isolated. These sweaty visual callbacks to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre endure while other elements feel like a middle finger to the franchise's legacy. I'm especially reminded how Leatherface is a vastly more interesting character when he's following orders from bloodline psychopaths (cannibalistic or not), not operating as just another masked brute. So much about Sally Hardesty's inclusion and Leatherface's solo mission misses what even Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation gets right about the psychological horrors of each film atop butcher's shop carnage.
Mark Burnham's performance as Leatherface requires mainly physical imposition, less vocal in the slasher's later years. He can still flail the chainsaw in circular mayhem, but there's nothing to Leatherface outside his linebacker sprints and heavy plodding feet. He's meant to chase Generation Z'ers who quote "cancel culture" and spread their utopian rebranding like a cult, leading to a few choice sequences, like when Sarah Yarkin's Melody sees the chainsaw blade coming at her through wooden floorboards like a shark's fin. The fear on Yarkin and Elsie Fisher's faces translates when staring down a lumbering horror icon (Yarkin finds more success); it's just their characters aren't written past traceable outlines. It's a shame because splatterhouse goodness this extreme feels wasted by an experience that's too focused on making audiences feel violated and miserable. I watch enough horror movies to know you can do that and still tell a terrifically macabre tale — once again, 2013's Evil Dead.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/cszmfQl
This could be a real lead forward for personal gaming... Revolutionise gaming
No comments:
Post a Comment