Imagine for a moment that all the Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequels and remakes and reboots had never happened, just the original movie, and this is a direct continuation of that movie's story - well, as "direct" as it can be with the events here happen almost 50 years after the original ...

Deep deep in rural Texas: Four young and good-looking land developers, Melody (Sarah Yarkin), her sort-of mousey sister Lila (Elsie Fisher), her fiancé Dante (Jacob Latimore), and blonde Ruth (Nell Hudson), have bought a ghost town in order to revive it and have it repopulated by good-looking youngsters who are like themselves tired of city life. Of course, the property is deep in Leatherface country, but Leatherface hasn't been seen for almost 50 years and ought to be in his 70s now. However, soon our youngsters notice that deep rural Texas isn't always in tune with their urban lifestyles, like when they find out the city's caretaker Richter (Moe Dunford) is a gun crazy brute, and old Confederate flags are still flying in town. They also find that the town hasn't been quite vacated, as old Jeannie (Alice Krige) and her (quite grown up) foster son Baby (Mark Burnham) still live in the orphanage despite having been dislodged long ago. So our heroes call the police (William Hope, Jolyon Coy), who promptly come to evict Jeannie and Baby. Jeannie has a heart attack though, so Ruth decides to accompany her, Baby, and the bolice to the hospital. On the way there, Jeannie dies though, and Baby goes completely berserk, kills the cops and Ruth, then takes off Jeannie's face to wear over his own - and yes, Baby was Leatherface all along. He then returns to town, where in the meantime the buyers have arrived, and ultimately kills pretty much everybody in sight, meeting little to no resistance. Ultimately, only Melody and Lila survive the ordeal, but Leatherface isn't someone to take prisoners, so he chases them through town - when unexpected help arrives from Sally, sole survivor of the events in the original movie (but played by Olwen Fouéré rather than Marilyn Burns as the latter died in 2014), and she has been a ranger ever since the events back when looking for Leatherface - not very successfully though. But will she be enough to stop Leatherface?

Spoiler: No, after not killing him when she had a clear shot, it doesn't take long for him to kill her, but at least she provides the last two survivors with some firepower. But that might not be enough to save the day ...

All too obviously taking a page or two from 2018's Halloween playbook, this is yet another sequel that tries to breathe new air into a series that has long run out of steam by retconning pretty much everything that happened after the original movie, but that at the same time doesn't even have the decency to go for an original (or even generic) title, instead just adopts the original's title for ... reasons I guess (and no, the ommission of "the" doesn't make it a different title, that's just silly).

But while 2018's Halloween was at least somewhat successful with playing with and subverting elements of the original Halloween and trying to replicate that movie's feel, this Texas Chainsaw Massacre doesn't go to any length to pay homage to the original in more than the occasional Easter Egg, instead it tells a rather generic slasher story that wouldn't have gone any differently if instead of Leatherface the villain had been, let's say, Jason Voorhees or Norman Bates even. Also, the story features its fair share of plotholes, none of the characters seem to have any actual arcs and seem at best generic when they're given special traits even, and more often than not their reactiions to things leave one wondering - which in fairness, this movie shares with many slashers.

That said, this certainly is not the worst movie ever, heck, it's not even the worst Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel, as while it fails on the plot level, it's at least tensely directed, the kill scenes are all well put together and show some creativity, and the film certainly doesn't shy away from blood and guts. Now that's not to say this is a particularly "good" movie, but a bland but fun ride at least.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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