Movie Review: Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

Written by Chris Thomas Devlin, Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe), and Rodo Sayagues (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe), and directed by David Blue Garcia, Texas Chainsaw Massacre is meant to be a direct sequel to the 1974 film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Synopsis: “After nearly 50 years of hiding, Leatherface returns to terrorize a group of idealistic young friends who accidentally disrupt his carefully shielded world in a remote Texas town.”

This is a very important thing to note. Leatherface has supposedly been hiding for 50 years from the time of the original film. Gunnar Hansen (RIP) who played Leatherface in that film was 27 at the time. This would put Leatherface at 77 years old. Taking this into consideration, and also what is commonly known as “Plot Armor”, we can let that slide for the sake of argument. But even though the writing is expected to be bad in these types of films, the synopsis doesn’t even make sense. Some very mild general plot spoilers are below.

The film begins with some people who show up to the abandoned town of Harlow, TX. It’s a ghost town of some kind, and these people are here to sell some of the property the bank owns, and then restore the town and live there. They notice a confederate flag hanging out the window of an orphanage in the middle of town, and when they go to pull it down, a woman inside says she lives there and asks what they are doing there. They say that she shouldn’t be there because the bank owns the property, which she denies. The police then show up to remove her (without even verifying anything) and Leatherface is just living there in the middle of town with her. He even helps her into the police car, and they know that he is her son and even say “Oh, that’s just her son”. So, he has supposedly been “hiding”, but the police already know him and that he lives there.

There are some other things that just don’t really add up in this film like Sally from the original film who apparently has been looking for Leatherface for the past 50 years, who would be 75 now (going by actor age). She just kind of joins the fun halfway through. It seemed a bit unnecessary. Sure, it was for fan service, but as other people have brought up, this is very similar to the concept that Halloween Kills had going. Both films failed to execute these ideas well. Also, all of these characters are now senior citizens. I don’t think 75-year-old Sally showing up to fight 77-year-old Leatherface would have really been that action-packed.

Putting all of that aside, there are some redeeming qualities. The tension was pretty good, and the production value was high. There was also a great score, nice cinematography, good acting, and plenty of gore to go around. Leatherface definitely doesn’t disappoint when it comes to brutality in this one, and it was some of the best we have seen in a modern slasher.

So, would we recommend this film? It’s hard to say. If you want to watch a gorefest and go in with low expectations for everything else, then Texas Chainsaw Massacre is for you. We definitely think that all of the slasher boxes were checked. At the same time, it’s hard to ignore the missed opportunity that this film had to be really great.