Description from Netflix:
The Leatherface saga continues where the 1974 horror classic
left off. When a young woman travels to Texas to collect her
inheritance, she discovers that the brutal chainsaw-yielding madman is part of
the bequest.
My thoughts:
Let’s get this out of the way first: this is supposed to be
a direct sequel to the original film.
But there are a ton of inconsistencies with this.
For starters, the ages of the characters. This film takes place in present day (we know
this because we see iPhones). The main
character was a baby at the time of the original. If the timeline held true, she would be
pushing 40. Leatherface – who we’ll say
was probably mid-20s in the original (Gunnar Hansen was 27 at the time) – would
be in his 60s.
Granted, no one wants to see a broken-down Leatherface
chasing around a bunch of scantily-clad middle-aged folk (well, I’m sure some
people would want to see that), but they could’ve at least tried to make sense
of the timeline. Set it in the mid-90s
or something. Or have a Sawyer survive
the attack and have a baby 10-15 years later.
Just put a little bit of thought into it. Frankly, it’s insulting. Did they not think anyone would notice?
Best looking 40 year old I've ever seen
I also had an issue with the number of people in the house
at the beginning of this movie (there were 3 people in the house at the end of
the original, and at least 7 – excluding the baby – in the beginning of this
movie), but I’ve since made my peace with that.
There’s a delay from the time the original ends to the time the cops get
to the house, so I suppose they had time to fill the house with inbreds and
guns. Point conceded.
Now that we have that out of the way…
"A jump to conclusions mat. But for chainsaw murders."
I like how they went back to the idea of Leatherface being a
mentally challenged person (he is referred to as “mentally stunted”, having the
mental capacity of an 8 year-old).
That’s how he was presented in the original. However, recent incarnations of Leatherface
(both the 2003 remake and 2006’s The
Beginning) have seen him presented as an evil force of nature, on par with
Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. An
entity of pure evil, killing without rhyme or reason. It was nice to see this film going back to
basics, and tapping into the soul of the original Leatherface.
Of course, I say it’s “nice”, but, in the end, the intention
of the killer doesn’t matter too much.
Lots of people are dead. Whether
the killer killed with malice or out of habit or because he was controlled by
other people makes no difference. Dead
is dead.
Dead sexy, amiright? Seriously though, she's probably going to die
Still, I suppose it makes a small difference in how we feel
about him. We’re scared of him, but we
also feel a little bad for him. In the
original, he was killing at the whim of his family. In this film, he’s killing to avenge the
wrongful death of his family. He does kill
quite a few innocent people, so it’s hard to feel too much sympathy for
him. But, for a little while, I felt a
sliver of sympathy for Leatherface.
Eskimo sisters
By the end of the movie, we’re supposed to be cheering for
him. He even helps out the main character
(Heather), even if she has to utter the single worst line in the movie to get
him to do so. It’s almost enough to make
you forget that he has killed every one of her friends, all in terrible ways.
Almost.
That brings me to a larger question. There’s a weird storyline where Heather’s
boyfriend (Ryan) cheats on her with her best friend (Nikki). As near as I can tell, there’s really no
reason for it. It doesn’t create
conflicts between the characters. Heather
never even finds out about it. I think
it was just a plot device to separate Heather from her friends, but there are
less convoluted ways to do that.
I assume one of the reasons for doing this would be to get
us to cheer for their deaths. “They’re
cheaters, they deserve to die, rah rah” stuff.
If that was the case, I’m not on board.
Look. I’m not above
cheering for deaths in slashers. Using
this series as an example, I openly rooted for the deaths of the two frat kids
at the beginning of Texas Chainsaw
Massacre II. It’s not like I’m standing
on some moral high ground. To watch a
slasher movie is to occasionally find yourself openly rooting for people to
die. It comes with the territory.
But this? One minor
scene where two characters cheat? That’s
not enough for me to root for death. That’s
just lazy.
Were this a smarter movie, I would possibly think that this
was there for this exact purpose: to force the audience to take a look at
themselves and ask why they’re cheering for the death of a couple young adults
who did nothing wrong other than to sleep with someone they were not
dating. But this was not a smart movie,
and that is not what the filmmakers were going for.
Smile, adulterers. You just signed your death warrant
There are a lot of callbacks to the original, which could be
kind of cool. But a lot of them were not
subtle callbacks. That’s mainly due to
the fact that this movie starts with a montage of moments from the original,
and most of the callbacks involved scenes from that montage. A hot girl with red shorts walking to the
house! A dead armadillo! A girl in a freezer! And so on.
There were a couple cool set-up points with Heather’s
character. In the beginning of the
movie, we see her working as a butcher in a grocery store. We also find out that she’s an artist who
uses bones (animal, not human) in her work.
I enjoyed seeing those little moments worked into her character.
I can’t say that this was a great movie, or even a very good
movie. But I found myself enjoying it
more than I thought I would. It’s an
absolute mess, but a fairly entertaining mess.
Rating: 2.5/5
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