I was excited to watch the new “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (2022) because I heard it had good gore.
I’m a sucker for gore.
I can sincerely say that it did live up to that expectations.
Warning, there are going to be some spoilers ahead.
I went into watching it thinking it was a remake.
To my pleasant surprise, it was a sequel to the original 1973 movie.
The beginning of the movie recapped the original and explained that the final girl, Sally, is a sheriff in town because she has spent her life searching for Leather Face.
One thing that I found weird was that the town exploits the events of the first movie.
The main characters stop at a gas station and they sell merchandise like chainsaw cork screws and whatnot.
The movie has four main characters, two sisters and a couple.
At first, they are pretty unlikeable.
At the gas station, a guy in a big truck who is carrying a gun pulls into the pump next to them.
One of the sisters, Melanie, makes a comment about him needing to compensate for something by carrying it.
She is also just rude to him in a way that is completely unprovoked.
This instantly makes me dislike the character.
However, throughout the movie, we learn that he is actually a good guy and ends up helping her, even though she was nothing but nasty to him on various occasions.
This may play into the message of “don’t judge a book by its cover,” which I typically find unnecessary in some movies, but in this one, it works.
However, this movie does have a couple of unnecessary underlying messages and themes.
When the group arrives in town, there is a confederate flag hanging in one of the buildings.
It is owned by an older woman who used to run the orphanage.
There is only one boy left, who turns out to be Leather Face.
The confederate flag does create a reason for the group to go into the house and have the confrontation.
This ends up leading to Leather Face getting upset and going on a killing spree.
The racial part of it, however, seems misplaced and trying too hard to seem “woke.”
We also soon learn that the reason one of the sisters made the comment about the gun is that the other sister got shot in a school shooting.
That premise was only touched on a couple of times and seemed a little sloppy with its execution to create character development.
About halfway through the movie, after the first couple kills, we meet present-day Sally.
At first, I was upset that they did not get the same actress to play her, but I did some Googling, and I learned that the original actress had passed away.
Looking at the actress who played her in the original and the one who did in this sequel, they do look pretty similar.
So, I do give the creators credit for choosing a good replacement.
I do not like how they had Sally act though.
She and other characters were not as smart as I had hoped, for modern horror, the characters usually do not just freeze and watch as they are getting killed.
Although I do have a lot of criticisms, there are a few details I think were clever.
At the beginning of the movie, we see that the car has autopilot.
This small detail comes into play at the very end.
There is also a mirror between Lila (the sister in the school shooting) and Sally.
They both eventually have the same fate: they survived Leather Face, but neither knows who he is because he was wearing a real skinned face mask.
We can assume Lila will also be plagued with the want to spend her life hunting him down.
Overall, I rate it 7 out of 10.
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