texas chainsaw massacre [2022]

when the world seems to be churning in shit, & the blues got ya knocked down but not out, it is time to go to the movies.  my movie-going is primarily streaming platforms &/or a DVD disinterred from my collection.  this direct sequel to the great tobe hooper classic dropped on Netflix last month.  

i'm a crusty old horror fan.  i've seen the 2003 remake directed by marcus nispel & starring jessica biel as the final girl.  i admired that production.  nispel captured a bit of the grit that hooper was so good at making in the classic 1974 original.

but this movie ain't it.  directed by david blue garcia [who replaced ryan & andy tohill because the producers weren't digging what the tohill bros were making] this sequel takes place 50 years after the horrors of the first movie in a ghost town called harlow deep in the dusty heart of texas.  a group of young entrepreneurs purchased the ghost town on the cheap & expect to sell the buildings off piece by piece to other young business men & women because in the phrase of another completely different movie, if you build it they will come.  

what happens is this.  the young people find an older lady played by alice krige, a caretaker in an orphanage.  she has one last boy she takes care of.  guess who might be her charge?  in no time, the caretaker croaks, leatherface makes a mask of krige's face, & shit gets fucked up.  garcia has an eye for details & creates a pretty mise en scene but fuck if the director can't make tension or develop characters.  i hated every single person.  including leatherface & i was rooting for him the entire time.  

the cliches of my beloved genre were so obvious in this production.  see a pool of filthy water & you know the penultimate scene will have the principles in it.  as soon as we meet the final girl she might as well have FINAL GIRL tattooed on her forehead.  oh, & sally hardesty, played by the late marilyn burns, the survivor & OG final girl of the first film, returns.  sally is played with steely nerve by olwen fouere.  she's been hunting leatherface all these years.  revenge! is the fore thought of the film but even that gets short shrift.  the movie even opens with sally preparing to get badass.  but garcia spends about five minutes on sally's revenge narrative.  & then drops it in the last reel like it was the repast of a secondary character's fever dream.

what the fuck.  garcia does get things pretty gooey.  if you like your movies wet, gushy & red this flick might do the trick.  if you want characters to root for you should stick with the original 1974 film, or the 2003 reboot.  i'd love to see the footage shot by the tohill bros.  it's reportedly so awful that the producers promptly fired the filmmakers & garcia had to reshoot the whole film from scratch.  but this is the improved version?  & if this the same leatherface that fucked up sally hardesty 50 years ago then our bogeyman would be in his 70s.  killing asshole twenty & thirty-somethings with a chainsaw is exhausting, taxing, physically demanding work.  even a demon would get winded!  but man! leatherface gives it the old college try.