From hippies to hipsters, ‘Texas Chainsaw’ is back
Anticipating the inevitable guts and gore and murderous mayhem, I screened Netflix’s new “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” on my TV in broad daylight, with sunlight streaming through the windows and the comforting din of traffic below, and with the remote in my hand throughout, ready to hit “pause” to delay the really bad stuff.
But the question does arise not long into this film, the 10th movie in the “Chainsaw” oeuvre: Did we really need another? And sadly, given the lack of imagination, creativity or even basic attention to logic in a perfunctory and downright silly script, the answer seems a resounding “Nope.”
Unless you just want to see a lot of chainsaw killing. Because, there is that.
The new installment, directed by David Blue Garcia with a screenplay by Chris Thomas Devlin, is billed as a direct sequel to the original. The 1974 film, directed by Tobe Hooper, has been called disgusting and disturbing, but also a classic of the genre.
The plot involved a group of young people — hippies, this being the ‘70s — who happened on the remote Texas property of a troubled family of cannibals. Out came the chainsaw. Only a young woman named Sally survived.
From hippies... to hipsters. In 2022, we have a group of idealistic 20-something entrepreneurs from Austin, who decide that Harlow, Texas, essentially a ghost town, is the ideal place to buy up and gentrify. They arrive to organize things just before a busload of their investors comes rolling in, ready to party.
“Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” a Netflix release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America “for strong bloody horror violence and gore, and language.” Running time: 81 minutes.