Massacre à la tronçonneuse

Awful, really bad.

The good? Some nice gore.

The bad? Literally everything else, whoever wrote this script should never write a script again. The bar for Chainsaw sequels was already low, so I guess it's some kind of achievement to lower it further.

I was honestly quite impressed with the cinematography, production, and pacing of the first half, despite the silliness of the plot that was clearly a way of setting up a smorgasbord of fodder for Leatherface. And boy does he take advantage. Though the humanization of the character was palpable and refreshing, that all disintegrates in the second half, where the movie follows every horror trope and then one-ups it with the stupidest decisions, most obvious plot holes and a laughable absence of realism. In the first half however we have your typical local hick who's expected to be one of the antagonists but lo and behold he's actually a great guy. Many of the shots, especially the scene in the sunflower field, were just shy of beautiful in a grisly way. The whole bus scene was both funny in a satirical way, disturbingly gruesome, and yet what preceded it made absolutely zero sense. If only the flick stuck to its guns with the deviations from horror norms, it could've been a solid installment in this cesspool of a series.

Whenever I watch a Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel, I realize what makes the original 1974 film so iconic. This 2022 sequel is also a completely forgettable one, ideally made for instant consumption with not much to read into. The script is a bland mess - there's zero depth to any of the characters, including Leatherface himself. It doesn't even bother to show that Leatherface has been living in hiding all these years because he pops up exactly when you expect him to, unlike in the original where you gasp for a few moments. If you haven't watched the original, it will simply seem like a big, bulky guy randomly going on the run with a chainsaw in hand, chopping people. In my eyes, there's no Leatherface without the Sawyer family.

Where it does score a little is in the gore department. Some kills end up being a lot bloodier than you might think. But the payoff is so little I couldn't care less for any of the characters or the surface-level social commentary it offers. The bus scene is a gory delight, serving up a couple of minutes of good, old-fashioned slice & dice. The Sally Hardesty subplot is a replica of what they tried to do with Laurie Strode in the Halloween sequels, sans any texture. I loved Elsie Fisher in Eighth Grade, but this film doesn't even attempt to get anything out of her. The atmosphere too, didn't evoke Texas enough. I'm not exactly interested in another sequel to this, but I'd still watch it because of its connection to the original.

The writer shouldn't write ever again. The writer shouldn't write ever again. The writer shouldn't write ever again. The writer shouldn't write ever again.

Everything you want in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie: School shootings, cancel culture, racism, white guilt, social media, Jamie Lee Curtis V. 2.0, Gentrification.

Imagine the worst type of writers, working with the worst kind of producers, hiring the worst possible actors for the worst possible type of film. That's what this is.