
Last Updated on July 14, 2024 by FANGORIA Staff
What do you hope for when they announce a new Texas Chainsaw film? Whatโs on your list of essential inclusions, new directions, good choices? I think we each have our own checklists, and that those checklists are as unique and as wonderful as each of us. One manโs peak is another manโs gutter.
Today we must once again ask ourselves that question as Netflix drops the full trailer for its ninth Leatherface to-do, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Is it everything you dreamed, or everything you dreaded? Letโs take a look.
There are pros and cons in here.
We start with standard-issue slasher protagonists โ a bunch of young people about whom I will almost certainly not care when their time comes. A TIME-HONORED TRADITION. So far, so good.
If Texas Chainsaw 3D can reproduce the original house exactly, why fudge it here? Points off on the pedantry scale.
I am weirdly on board with the โSally Hardesty in 2018 Jamie Lee Curtis drag but add a cowboy hatโ presented by Olwen Fouรฉrรฉ. Itโs perhaps a little โwe have Laurie Strode at home,โ but Sallyโs the OG, legacy sequels are in right now, and itโd be foolish for this production to not capitalize on that trend, despite just about everyone from the original film being dead. Iโm calling this a Good Move.
Have movies ever presented a normal person with newspaper clippings glued to a wall? Lotta scrapbooking slander in cinema.
Bulgaria looks enough like Texas, I suppose. Is that due to Texan director David Blue Garcia? Possibly! (But that shot of Leatherface in the field of sunflowers flirts with some kinda ersatz A24 energy; carefulโฆ)
And is that Alice Krige I spy as a heretofore unseen member of the Slaughter/Sawyer/Whoever family? Iโll be honest, it used to irk me how every film seemed to introduce more and more family members โ after 1986, itโs never been (Chop) topped, so why bother? โ but Iโve come to look forward to finding those weird new colors in the crayon box. You never know when youโll get a Viggo Mortensen or Tonie Perensky in the mix. Looking forward to Ms. Krigeโs work here.
A bus full of tourists attempting to stop a chainsaw-wielding Leatherface byโฆ filming them with their iPhones is perhaps an easy layup, but Iโm an easy lay. Sorry! (Didnโt these people see the Texas Chainsaw 3D reshoots? iPhones canโt stop Leatherface!)
I still donโt love that Leatherface is wearing someoneโs sopping wet face. Would you put on a wet t-shirt fresh from the laundry? Leatherface is many things, but heโs always struck me as practical.
There you have it! Will โTry anything and youโre canceled, broโ join the hallowed Chainsaw sequel lexicon next to โDo your thing, cuzโ? Stranger things have happened.
Iโll be in front of my TV at midnight when Texas Chainsaw Massacre hits Netflix on February 18th.