The original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre predated the original Halloween by four years, but now it’s the former’s turn to follow in the latter’s footsteps, resulting in a case of the blind leading the blind.
This new Texas Chainsaw Massacre (hereinafter TCM) takes its cues from the recent Halloween and Halloween Kills, even bringing back the franchise’s original Final Girl — the character, that is; Marilyn Burns, the actress who played the first Sally Hardesty, died in 2014, and she’s in a better place now (i.e., not in this fucking movie).
In general, though, the only thing that separates this from pretty much every slasher film ever made is that, instead of the usual Dead Teenager Movie, TCM might be the first-ever Dead Millennial Movie.
The kills, by the way, are a disappointment; the only standout is the first one, involving a very creative use of the bone shard sticking out of a compound fracture. Beyond that, the film fails to deliver truly memorable and inventive death scenes.
The best thing that can be said of this uninspired dreck is that it’s short (shorter still considering that about 10 of its 81 minutes are devoted to the closing credits); then again, any movie is bound to be brief that lacks a proper conclusion — and I’m not referring to the fact that when Sally, who has been hunting Leatherface “for more than 30, 40 years,” finally has him cornered, she apparently decides, all of a sudden, that after having waited multiple decades for this moment, she might as well wait a bit longer; after all, what’s another five more minutes between old friends?
This is stupid, but if the movie ended there, it wouldn’t be any more unsatisfying than the actual, abrupt ending that leaves viewers feeling unfulfilled and disappointed, as if the film simply ran out of time to wrap up the story properly, showcasing the disappointment of the final scenes.
And the worst that can be said of TCM is that it has the gall to draw a parallel between the titular chainsaw massacre and a high school shooting (the fictional “Stonebrook High,” which sounds very uncomfortably like Stoneman Douglas High School), as if a dumb movie that deals in gratuitous violence and doesn’t even have the decency to provide a cathartic resolution could ever find a way to connect emotionally with the victims of a real-life massacre.
The attempt to link the two events is tasteless and insensitive, adds nothing of value to the film, and only serves to highlight the shallow nature of the movie as a whole. Exploiting real-life tragedies for entertainment diminishes the seriousness of the issues at hand and bespeaks a lack of empathy for those affected.