Texas Chainsaw Massacre Review

That chainsaw sure has burnt a lot of fuel but somehow keeps revving. Other horror franchises have, to my mind at least, had far more success in comparison to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Yet here we are, on the ninth entry.

It’s been quite amusing seeing the Twitter reactions to the latest Massacre, which by the way, it really is. Lots of people die! Anyway, the majority of comments I’ve seen have been negative. The bad feels tickle me, because I thought it was alright! Texas Chainsaw Massacre – what is it with horror titles now – has a lot of problems. But it gets its work done quickly and messily. Seems somewhat fitting of the title actually.

There are a lot of comparisons to 2018’s Halloween; fair, with a horror icon returning years after their initial spree, to find an aged and scarred protagonist ready for them. But some things are missing.

TCM has not had the same amount of care or reverence applied to it. This is a straight up sequel to the original that doesn’t care about moving things on bar time. Leatherface is no different to what you’d expect, and the callbacks to the original film will only land for the most ardent of fans. TCM doesn’t have a memorable final girl like Laurie Strode. So to try that trick doesn’t make much sense.

Then there’s the newly introduced bus of victims characters. Frankly, they leave no impression, despite leaning heavily, and clumsily, into hot topics like gun violence and gentrification. Think of Leatherface as an angry boomer getting a bunch of snowflakes off his lawn and you’ve got the level it’s pitched at.

But there are positives! Ditch any higher expectations and TCM is a reasonably entertaining and very gory film. The goriness skews the recent trend for CGI violence and it feels better for it. I can appreciate the film leaning into chainsaw schenanigans too.

There’s a briskness to TCM, and the odd nice shot, that stops it being a waste of time for me. None of this makes it an amazing film, or even a good film, but it’s entertaining enough.

For reference, I think the original and the 2003 reboot are decent. So that’s two out of eight films before this that could be considered good. The rest are varying levels of trash. There isn’t anything high-brow or particularly clever here to compare against. So adjust your expectations accordingly.