And as if to underscore the point, Netflix\u2019s Texas Chainsaw Massacre<\/em>, the latest attempt to work the same magic on a venerable horror franchise, makes Halloween Kills<\/em> look like, well, Halloween.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n It opens with one of its most direct quotations from the original film \u2013 still photos and a John Larroquette voice-over, this time narrating a true-crime documentary on the brutal killings of the 1974 original. (\u201cFor the next hour, we\u2019ll take you on a journey into one of Texas\u2019s most famous unsolved murders.\u201d) Much like the 2018 Halloween<\/em> \u2013 a phrase I\u2019m afraid you\u2019ll read a lot in this review \u2013 this new Chainsaw Massacre<\/em> is framed as a direct sequel to the original, erasing and ret-conning the events of the three sequels, the 2013 remake and its prequel, the previous<\/em> direct sequel (2013\u2019s Texas Chainsaw 3D<\/em>), and its<\/em> prequel (Leatherface<\/em>, from 2017, not to be confused with Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III<\/em>). Confused?<\/p>\n\n\n\n So we once again begin with a group of youths driving the back roads of Texas. Melody (Sarah Yarkin) and Dante (Jacob Latimore) are a pair of social media-wielding entrepreneurs en route to Harlow, Texas \u2013 a deep-in-the-heart \u201cghost town,\u201d all but abandoned, that they hope to turn into a hipster enclave. Dante brings his girlfriend (Jessica Allain); Melody drags along Lila (Elsie Fisher), her sister, which we know because she calls her \u201csis\u201d in their first interaction, as sisters do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So yes, as you\u2019ve gathered, Chris Thomas Devlin\u2019s screenplay (culled from a story by Don\u2019t Breathe<\/em> and Evil Dead <\/em>remake collaborators Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues) has all sorts of touches to make it relatable to Today\u2019s Troubled Teens\u2122. There\u2019s an immediate culture war stand-off with a gun-toting, pickup truck-driving, diesel smoke-spewing red-state redneck (Moe Dunford). Lila, our trauma avatar, is a school shooting survivor (from \u201cStonebrook High\u201d, an allusion to Marjorie Stoneman High that seems kinda tacky!). This group is followed by a busload investors and influencers, who descend on the town and start snapping Insta pics. And later, when Leatherface steps onto their party bus, everyone raises their phones, while one threatens, \u201cTry anything, you get cancelled, bro.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n (I feel like I should step in here to assure you that I have made none of this up.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n At any rate, thanks to a property dispute \u2013 yes, really \u2013 these pesky kids give Leatherface\u2019s (adopted?) mother a heart attack, and when she dies in an ambulance, he starts killing people. Director David Blue Garcia trots out the iconography (the human skin face, the chainsaw, etc.) but doesn\u2019t seem to understand any of it; it\u2019s like an entire movie of that dumb moment from the prologue of Halloween<\/em> where the podcaster is holding out the Michael Myers mask for no good reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, much like the 2018 Halloween<\/em> (I warned you), Texas Chainsaw Massacre<\/em> gives us the triumphant return of the original film\u2019s long-simmering, traumatized Final Girl. Sally Haredesty, we are told, \u201cbecame a Ranger here in Texas. She musta looked for that maniac for 30, 40 years.\u201d Once Leatherface starts killing, Sally \u2013 clad in a cowboy hat and Jane Campion hair \u2013 swoops back into action. But this thread carries zero weight, because the original Sally, Marilyn Burns, died in 2014; we have a long-standing attachment to Jamie Lee Curtis that we simply do not have for Nu Sally, the Irish stage actress Olwen Fou\u00e9r\u00e9, and the cringe-worthy attempts to create a similar personal dynamic between her and the mask-clad killer land with a thud. By the time she growls, \u201cI\u2019m the one that got away, and I\u2019m here to make sure you don\u2019t, motherfucker,\u201d well, I was longing for death myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fisher, like Fou\u00e9r\u00e9, does the best she can with this gruel, and her character is initially intriguing \u2013 rebellious against her sister, resistant to this dopey idea, and fascinated by the conservative culture she\u2019s been airdropped into. But those quirks fade away by the second act, and any way you slice it, it\u2019s profoundly depressing that this is her first leading role since Eighth Grade<\/em>. Her momentary nuances aside, the script is weak sauce \u2013 dumb dialogue, obvious story turns, and kills you see coming a mile away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those kills boast a couple of decent shock scares, but little else. The grisly violence is wince-inducing but a miscalculation, since the original wasn\u2019t scary because of its gore \u2013 it was because of its intensity and tension, and none of this comes anywhere close. (There is one clever bit of suspense with a swinging kitchen door, but that probably only lands because it\u2019s reminiscent of that chillingly slammed door in the original.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ultimately, the problem with Netflick Chainsaw Massacre <\/em>is that it\u2019s a ceaselessly slick sequel to one of the grimiest movies ever made, and so beyond the storytelling style, the sheer look, the feel, the aesthetic reads like something from another planet. It all feels like a baffling miscalculation \u2013 if you\u2019re trying to erase the sequels and replicate the original, then make something recognizably reminiscent of it. Don\u2019t just shoplift the character into a lazy, substandard 2020s slasher movie and call it a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m sure its creators thought they were making something \u201cfor the fans,\u201d or restoring its spotty legacy, or some such nonsense. (One of the producers is the original film\u2019s co-writer, Kim Henkel.) But this isn\u2019t just a bad movie; for anyone who loves or cares about the original, it\u2019s a profoundly depressing one. “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is now streaming on Netflix<\/a>, because they made us hold this review until the last possible second. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/texas-chainsaw2-1024x512.jpg\")
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nD-<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n