Texas Chainsaw Bloodbath, On Netflix, Is A Shallow Continuation Of The Leatherface Story

February 21, 2022

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Director: David Blue Garcia
Writers: Chris Thomas Devlin, Fede Alvarez, Rodo Sayagues
Forged: Mark Burnham, Elsie Fisher, Olwen Fouéré, Nell Hudson, Sarah Yarkin, Jacob Latimore
Cinematographer: Ricardo Diaz
Streaming on: Netflix

Shorter than its lean prequel, however filled with references to the present cultural local weather and characters who function outdoors the realm of rationality, Texas Chainsaw Bloodbath borrows the beats of its traditional predecessor whereas misunderstanding its spirit, leading to what usually looks like a parody of the franchise. As a direct sequel to The Texas Chain Noticed Bloodbath (1974) — the movie ignores the seven movies within the franchise launched since — it drops the underlying pathos that made the unique so affecting, swapping it with a serviceable slasher plot that conveys its opinions about millennials with all of the subtlety of a chainsaw hacking by means of flesh.

Each movies observe a gaggle of youngsters who journey to distant Texas, solely to run into the chainsaw-wielding cannibal Leatherface. The unique, nonetheless, recontextualised the horror style by transferring the main focus away from the fear inflicted by the perpetrator, and emphasising the tragedy of his victims’ deaths, rendered much more affecting by their youth. In that movie, the teenagers’ gory ends solely happened due to their trusting nature. Set towards the sweltering Texas summer time, they exhibited the guilelessness of these within the spring of their youth. They picked up a hitchhiker in a wierd a part of the nation, regarded to planets in retrograde to make sense of their lives and didn’t assume twice earlier than in search of shelter at an deserted home. As determined as viewers may need been to get them to rethink their plans, they couldn’t fault their obliviousness — who thinks about demise within the prime of their life?

The sequel, then again, proceeds to make its characters (performed by Elsie Fisher, Nell Hudson, Sarah Yarkin and Jacob Latimore) as unlikeable as attainable, casting them because the vapid perpetrators of gentrification and late-stage capitalism. Once they journey to the Texas city of Harlow, aspiring to renovate and promote its properties to influencers, a Black character doesn’t specific misery on the sight of a Accomplice flag, however on the considered his woke traders recognizing it. Whereas particulars like these mark the Netflix movie as firmly of this time, it goes on to shorten its shelf-life by dropping references to that viral ‘feral hogs’ tweet and threats to ‘cancel’ its villain, traces that whereas briefly amusing will solely make the movie look like a interval piece quickly, given how briskly web tradition shifts. The unique, in distinction, stands alone as a timeless horror film, its Vietnam Struggle context and allusions to the rise of automation solely seen upon nearer inspection.

Now, practically 50 years later, Leatherface springs into motion when the group forcibly evicts his adoptive mom, the stress of which kills her. This resolution to humanise the franchise’s well-known villain deflates a lot of the strain he carried again when he was only a mute image of doom. Is telling viewers {that a} man, who surgically peels off folks’s faces to put on as a masks, additionally occurs to like his mom alleged to elicit sympathy for him? It’s unclear.

Additionally Learn: The 12 Finest Horror Movies Streaming On Netflix

One of many greatest issues plaguing the Netflix movie, nonetheless, is its lack of texture. The usual Netflix sheen is omnipresent, whether or not the digital camera is capturing decrepit buildings or suffocating rows of cornfields. The unique, then again, was characterised by a visceral sense of the flesh and its fragility, from the opening closeups of gnarled hand tissue, to the hitchhiker who unnervingly reduce his palm open in entrance of the horrified group. By the point the primary kill occured, director Tobe Hooper didn’t must zoom into the violence. Simply the long-drawn-out noise of the chainsaw revving was chilling sufficient. The sequel is liberal with the CGI blood splatter, however approaches the violence perfunctorily, with a cop being stabbed along with his personal protruding bone the one instance of inventiveness. It’s in bringing again its authentic Last Lady Sally Hardesty (initially performed by Marilyn Burns, now by Olwen Fouéré) that the movie demonstrates its lack of concepts, recasting her from an unwitting lamb to the slaughter to a hardened avenger, a personality flip that doesn’t land. It’s not the one characterisation that doesn’t make sense, given {that a} survivor of a college capturing finds catharsis by selecting to perpetuate gun violence too.

A sequence through which the occasions of the unique movie turn into fodder for a tacky true-crime-style recreation on this one is maybe what finest encapsulates the writers’ method — an irreverent remodeling of supply materials. Texas Chainsaw Bloodbath places on its predecessor’s masks, however can’t replicate its soul.

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