"Texas Chainsaw Massacre" a requel that rattles and splatters

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

Just when the flesh-wearing, chainsaw-wielding Leatherface thought he was done, they pulled him back in for what is now the ninth film in the inarguably uneven slasher series. Still keeping the "chain" and "saw" as one word like the other follow-ups but slicing off the definite article and bringing back the "massacre," "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" serves as another try at a direct sequel to Tobe Hooper’s intense, palpably sweaty, documentary-raw 1974 terror classic. By de-canonizing itself, this 2022 sequel marks a fresh perspective with thematic swings that it does more than just cannibalize itself. That approach is very much for the better, considering this franchise has been so all over the place in quality (and tone and titles) and makes the “Halloween” continuity timeline look like a straight line.

Going the retcon route, Texas-born director David Blue Garcia and writer Chris Thomas Devlin (with a story credit by “Evil Dead” remake creators Fede Alvarez & Rodo Sayagues) do, however, shoehorn in the return of a legacy character to make this “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” a true requel (*winks at 2022's "Scream"*). Yes, sole survivor Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré taking over for the late Marilyn Burns) has the Laurie Strode/Sarah Connor/Sidney Prescott function, but first, there’s a new batch of warm-bodied Gen-Zers for boomer Leatherface.

Driving from Austin, idealistic social media influencers, including morally self-righteous Melody (Sarah Yarkin), work partner Dante (Jacob Latimore), and his artist girlfriend Ruth (Nell Hudson), hope to restore (read: gentrify) the ghost town of Harlow for a business endeavor. Melody has also brought along her indifferent sister Lila (Elsie Fisher), who would rather be anywhere else. With a busload of investors on their way, all these city slickers have to do is get rid of a Confederate flag strung outside a window and they’re good. Instead, they overstep, entering a building that is not empty and kicking a sick old woman (Alice Krige) and her hulking boy (Mark Burnham) out of their home, a former orphanage. You can practically hear the record scratch — and then the revving of you-know-whose chainsaw that hasn't buzzed since one of Texas’s unsolved murder cases on the summer of August 18, 1973. Meanwhile, heat-packing survivor and ranger Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré) gets a call and knows exactly where to go to end Leatherface's killer tendencies once and for all.

To many, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” will just look like yet another retro kids-come-to-town-and-bump-into-a-killer retread. While much of it is that on the most basic level, it is a tightly paced, sharply photographed, and thrillingly brutal slasher with rattling tension and so much splatter that makes the more-suggestive original look spotless. Director David Blue Garcia gets inspired stylistically (like with a swinging kitchen door during an attack, a chainsaw buzzing through a wood floor into a crawlspace like an upside-down shark fin, and Leatherface’s head poking out of a field of wilting sunflowers) and does commit to being just as gory, if not gorier, as the Platinum Dunes-outfitted remake and prequel. When Leatherface steps aboard a neon-lit party bus, cornering every passenger onboard and turning the party into an insane massacre, slasher fans can rest assured that director Garcia’s awesomely blood-soaked nightmare of a centerpiece delivers the goods.

Not every character has enough time to make an equal impression, but the core four do react more reasonably than a lot of head-slappingly stupid characters do in horror movies. Doing the bulk of the onscreen heavy lifting are Sarah Yarkin (“Happy Death 2U”) and Elsie Fisher (“Eighth Grade”) as sisters Melody and Lila. After Melody quickly realizes the errors of her entitlement, Yarkin gives herself over to being put through the down-and-dirty wringer, to the point that a pipe of raw sewage even cracks open on her head during one of the film's more intimate and nerve-jangling set-pieces underneath a house. Pegged as a final girl, Lila is already a survivor from a high school shooting, and Fisher brings believable inexperience and vulnerability to the role; in a decrepit moviehouse-set confrontation, you can really feel her familiar feeling of hopelessness returning. Nell Hudson (TV’s “Outlander”) is severely underutilized as the less-than-fully-realized Ruth, who chose the wrong time to be selfless; through committed performance alone, Hudson does make her worth our concern in one suspenseful scene inside a crashed ambulance in the middle of a sunflower field. Finally, Mark Burnham has a massively intimidating, if sometimes oddly sympathetic, presence as Leatherface, who’s always more terrifying when we don’t know what makes him tick. 

As for bringing Sally Hardesty back, it almost feels like a tacked-on decision clearly modeled after Laurie Strode in 2018’s “Halloween,” right down to Sally's line, “Fifty years I’ve been waiting for this night, just to see him again.” Now a hardened shell of her former self, Sally is still shaken by the trauma of that fateful day and the loss of her hippie friends and brother but officially ready to shoot the past in its face. Though one wishes the character didn't feel somewhat underserved, a quietly tough Olwen Fouéré makes every internal and badass moment count, her performance doing the late Marilyn Burns justice. 

As long as one doesn’t think too hard about what it’s boldly trying to say about gun violence and Jamie Lee Curtis’ favorite word trauma, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” works like a trusty power tool on a visceral level. In its effectively jolting, merciless, semi-surreal final moments, the film not only craftily pays homage to "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," but another original film starring a different horror icon. Objectively, nothing can recapture the unnerving power of that first film, which felt like a low-budget '70s artifact we shouldn't be watching, but 2022's “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” does what the ninth movie in any 48-year-old franchise should do. It takes chances and somehow makes a wildly bloody good time out of more chainsaw-massacre gnarliness.

Grade: B 

Netflix is releasing “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (83 min.) to stream on February 18, 2022.