You may or may not remember me making a post after having seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the first time. If you do recall this post (or have just read it after clicking the link), you probably could tell how excited I was to see more of Leatherface and the franchise as a whole. I was expecting him to become a fixture of my blog, and my life in general honestly, but you’ve probably noticed by now that I’ve barely mentioned anything Texas Chainsaw-related, anywhere, since then.
The reason is, sadly, very simple:
I was extremely disappointed by what came after the 1974 film, and ultimately feel that this is one franchise that never should have been such. It was one perfect movie, that didn’t need to be added to. A situation where lightning was never going to strike twice, if you will.
The original sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, is just about the definition of 80s camp, which makes no sense whatsoever when put up next to its predecessor. It could be a fun movie on its own, and Chop Top Sawyer is honestly a pretty solid character and is actually a favorite of mine (though I do wonder why, since they were already going in an over-the-top ridiculous direction with this movie, they didn’t just make him the Hitchhiker from the original movie Frankenstein’d back to life somehow since it’s essentially the same character) but this movie is such a polar opposite of the original that it ultimately comes off like a parody. You can’t take a movie that was raw and dark and gritty, that terrified so many people with how realistic it seemed, and follow it up with a movie that doesn’t seem to take itself seriously in the least. This is how the Scary Movie franchise would have done a Texas Chainsaw parody in the 1980s. Like I said, it could be a fun watch, if it weren’t marketed as the highly anticipated for over a decade sequel to an iconic film.
I did watch the one that came after it as well, the first movie in the franchise that was titled Leatherface, and I barely remember a moment of it. All I can really say about it is that it obviously couldn’t have been very good. I have a vague memory of parts of it being silly, but not the same intentionally “fun” silly as the previous installment. I never did get around to watching whatever came after that, but I’ve heard it’s so bad that the stars of the movie don’t even want their names associated with it anymore. If that’s the case, then I’m not going to waste my time watching it with the hope that it will be the installment in which the franchise finds its footing again, because that’s obviously not going to happen.
The 2003 remake, while a considerably better movie than any of the original sequels, also lacks something for me. It’s not terrible, but it’s definitely not on par with the original. One of the things that makes the 1974 film so great is its low-budget simplicity (which is a very rare thing to say about a horror movie but that’s how well it worked), but the 2003 version adds some bells and whistles that don’t need to be there…while also changing the story so much that it almost doesn’t even seem fair to call it a remake; it could just as easily be any random 2000s-era horror film featuring a chainsaw-wielding psychopath. Not one character (save for Leatherface I guess but that is a nickname after all) even has the same name as anyone from the ‘74 film. It’s a decent enough movie, but it still can’t hold a candle to what the original created.
I do plan to watch the other 2000s-era movies at some point, particularly the one where Bill Moseley plays Drayton Sawyer, but I’m in nowhere near the rush I thought I would be immediately after seeing the original.
The main thing I want to talk about today, though, is the newly released sequel that just dropped on Netflix.
My feelings about this movie have been fluctuating ever since it was officially announced. Given my disappointment with everything I’ve watched relating to this franchise save for the original, I wasn’t expecting much. But then came the announcement that it was going to be a direct sequel, a la Halloween 2018, and that Sally Hardesty would be returning. As someone who’s always felt as though she doesn’t get enough credit as a Final Girl, this excited me greatly. Then came the direct-to-Netflix announcement and my hopes fell again, though I tried to be optimistic that at least it was good enough for a big-name streaming service to pick up, rather than some cheap bad horror hub app.
When the
trailer was released, it became clear that this was most likely a bid to cash in on the popularity of far-into-the-future sequels like the new
Halloween trilogy, and most recently,
Scream. Sally Hardesty is looking very Laurie Strode 2018 here, but I was still happy to have her back in any real capacity. It’s entirely plausible that both Laurie
and Sally would turn out to be the same type of woman, hardened by the intense trauma of having narrowly escaped a madman who’d killed all their friends.
And so, I went into the movie with my expectations not really set one way or another. Maybe I’d like it, maybe I wouldn’t.
I’m honestly still not sure how I feel.
*****SPOILERS AHEAD*****
Our story starts off with our four protagonists, a set of young-adult influencers that seemed straight out of an episode of American Horror Stories, who are traveling to the ghost town of Harlow, Texas in the hope of fixing it up and creating something hip with their internet-famous food business. Not gonna lie, I’m instantly annoyed because modern teens/young adults in horror make me want to bang my head against the wall 90% of the time and I’m pretty sure I’m still not over the four knuckleheads from AHS: Death Valley thankyouverymuch, but thankfully, there is one kid in this group who seems worth something: Lila, who is basically just along for the ride because one half of the brains of this influencer operation happens to be her sister, Melody. Her partner is a guy named Dante and also along for the ride is Dante’s girlfriend, Ruth.
Melody is easily the loudest of the group, picking a fight with a local Texas cowboy looking dude whose name is later revealed to be Richter, for open-carrying a gun. Much to her annoyance, he turns out to be their contractor. As they’re settling into the town and preparing for investors, they notice a confederate flag hanging from one of the buildings, which turns out to be the once-home of the Harlow orphanage. Dante and Melody go inside to remove it, and end up face to face with a very old woman who claims she never agreed to sell the building to their cause, and that the deed is still in her name. Dante and Melody are pretty shitty to her, calling the cops to remove her while she protests that she needs to stay and take special care of her only remaining son, who can’t be out in the world on his own. As she’s being hauled away, she goes into cardiac arrest, just as the bus full of investors pulls in. In a moment of remorse, Melody declares she wants to go with the woman to the hospital, but Ruth insists she stay behind because she’s half of the business, and Ruth goes in her stead. On the way, the old woman dies, causing her son to fly into a rage, killing one of the officers and causing their vehicle to run off the road and into a trailer.
Meanwhile, there’s a small side story where Lila is talking to Richter, and we learn that she’s actually a victim of a school shooting and suffers from pretty severe PTSD. It’s an interesting bonding moment between a gun-nut and an actual gun violence victim, but sadly it doesn’t really go anywhere in the long run. I suppose it’s really not a storyline that belongs in a horror movie, but it’s definitely interesting to see both sides of the equation in the same room, and how Richter reacts.
Anyway, Ruth survives the crash and witnesses the old woman’s son cutting her face off and wearing it like a mask. Before she is killed, she manages to grab the radio and call for help. The only person to hear her is the local gas station attendant (because it’s always the gas station attendant) and when he hears Ruth say “He’s wearing her face!” He knows, instantly, that Leatherface has returned. Ruth also managed to send a text out prior to Leatherface’s initial rampage, confirming the old woman’s death to the others. When Richter finds out, he takes the keys to the investors’ bus and refuses to give them back until Dante can produce the deed to the orphanage. Dante of course can’t find it, so Melody insists they go back into the house to be sure it wasn’t there with the old woman after all.
Meanwhile, the gas station attendant has an important call to make. After all these years, we finally see Sally Hardesty again…and she’s living in Leatherface’s home from the original movie! Not sure how she’s managed to evade him for almost fifty years in that case, but I guess his momma really did keep him in check? Anyway, when we see Sally for the first time, she’s butchering a pig, but immediately after getting the ball, she packs up her gun and heads off to find Leatherface, with a picture of her deceased friends from 1974 attached to her mirror.
Back at the orphanage, Leatherface has returned home. Dante is incapacitated almost immediately, while Melody manages to hide. Dante is then found stumbling around outside badly wounded, and after he dies in his arms, Richter goes in to investigate, and tells everyone else to stay on the bus and not come out. Richter is also almost instantly killed. My personal opinion here is he went out a little quickly for probably being the most able to fight and experienced with a weapon, but this turns out to be the least of our problems. (More on that soon.) Before dying, though, Richter manages to push the keys back to Melody. Lila gets annoyed with waiting on the bus, as she should, because the one other person besides Richter who witnessed Dante’s death got back on the bus and didn’t say a word about why they were staying there, and goes into the orphanage to find Melody. The two narrowly escaped Leatherface, then get back on the bus, where the driver inexplicably stops, so naturally, Leatherface hops on. Reminding me why I hate young adults in horror settings, everyone immediately starts live-streaming the guy with the human flesh mask and chainsaw, one of them uttering the worst line in the movie, “Try anything and you’re canceled, Bro!” This triggers an absolutely crazy killing spree, which. If you’re into gore, it’s an absolute 10/10. It’s brutal and beautiful. Also, watching the killer slice through the annoying characters like butter is always satisfying.
The only survivors of the bus massacre are, of course, Melody and Lila, who, after escaping the bus, are picked up by Sally Hardesty herself, who has just been to the site of the police car crash and has no doubt in her mind after seeing the skinned face of his mother, that this is Leatherface’s handiwork.She instructs the girls to stay put in her truck until she kills him, and goes into the orphanage taunting him, daring him to remember her and admit what he did to her friends all those years ago. Leatherface is unmoved, and honestly I doubt that even as a younger man he would’ve had the mental capacity to remember specific people that he killed, as I doubt it’s any different than slaughtering pigs to him, but Sally is insistent that he wants him to know who she is. She’s really intense and it feels so good to see her long-awaited return. At one point Leatherface does even seem slightly afraid of her. But after she tosses her keys to Melody and Lila and heads off to finish him, Leatherface almost immediately regains the upper hand, impaling Sally on his chainsaw and thus ending the legacy of the original Final Girl before she ever really had much of a chance to reclaim it. This is where I have my biggest issue with this movie. It’s biggest draw was that it was bringing back who should always have been the franchise’s most revered character aside from Leatherface himself (and maybe Chop Top…I’m sorry, I just love Bill Moseley and if he’d made a cameo I may have died.) and the offed her, pretty unceremoniously, after only a tiny amount of screen time. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t cry. I’ve spent so much time arguing how little credit Sally gets as a final girl, and was so happy to finally cheer her on as a hero, and then…that. They could’ve at least had something a little more poignant happen. I’d almost rather they hadn’t put her in it at all, if they were basically planning to just use her name to get people to watch, rather than actually give the character the important role that she’s deserved for 48 years.
Anyway, rather than doing the smart thing and leaving town, Melody decides to try to run over Leatherface, and when he throws his chainsaw at the speeding vehicle, they end up crashing into Richter’s garage and Melody’s leg gets stuck on something inside the truck. Unable to move, she instructs Lila to run. She starts too, but then I guess grabs one of Richter’s guns, only to realize it isn’t loaded. Leatherface chases her out into the street, where he ends up being shot at by a barely-alive Sally. I pray that she will put the final nail in his coffin after all, but instead, he runs off and she passes the gun to Lila, using her last breath to tell her not to run, because if you run, he’ll never stop haunting you. I actually, really, really thought Sally was at least going to reveal herself to be the girls’ grandmother here, as it was mentioned earlier on in the movie that they did have a grandmother who was from Harlow, but heaven forbid we give Sally any kind of real relevance.
Anyway, Melody somehow frees herself from Sally’s truck, and after a battle of chainsaws and guns, it seems the two sisters kill Leatherface by drowning him. Morning comes, and Lila takes Sally’s hat and the pictures of her friends from 1973, and she and Melody prepare to leave Harlow. They turn on cruise control, open the sunroof, and…Leatherface returns, grabbing Melody and decapitating her, as Lila screams from the sunroof, looking quite a bit like Sally at the end of the original. Leatherface does a similar chainsaw dance to the one he did at the end of the original, and the end credits roll. I have to say, I did not see that coming. Major points for the surprise ending. There’s also a post-credits scene that shows Leatherface returning to his old home. I can not for the life of me figure out how he managed to stay away from it for so many years, but I suppose that’s irrelevant.
All in all, this movie surprised me by being my favorite thing to come out of the franchise since the original. However, that’s not a hard title to earn considering how little I think of most of the other movies. But in all fairness, this movie is really a fun watch, and very fast-paced. I truly did enjoy Sally Hardesty’s return, though I wish it hadn’t been so short-lived and that she’d had a chance to really do something, not just get tacked on for the sake of saying “look who’s back!” I also think this movie actually came to the closest to recapturing the simplicity of the original. Not that any movie could really ever match the raw realness of a low budget, early 70s horror, but for a movie set in the modern age, it’s not nearly as bloated as it could have been. It never really came off as trying too hard, save for, unfortunately, the fact that Sally’s return felt a little forced.
I enjoyed Lila as a Final Girl, also. Even though none of the protagonists had a major character development moment, Lila was easily the most likable, and her trauma really did show through, making it interesting to see how she learned to face her fear for the sake of survival, which definitely really earned her the Final Girl title. I do wish she could have had a little more time with Sally as well, as I think the two characters would have played off of each other well. In a perfect scenario, Sally would have survived and a sequel would have shown her and Lila fighting Leatherface together, but alas, Sally is destined to only live on as a legendary Final Girl in my heart, I suppose. Hopefully Lila will fare better in a sequel, if one happens. I would like to see more of her and what she becomes after losing Melody.
All in all, I wouldn’t say I loved the movie, but I definitely didn’t hate it and most likely will watch it again. While it isn’t perfect and can’t touch the original, I really don’t think it was bad. Leatherface really hasn’t ever been himself again since his 1974 debut, but I’ll accept this as the next chapter of his story, even if I ultimately think it should’ve ended after the first. It makes at least a little more sense than any of the others.
Stay spooky, my friends. And just remember, Sally Hardesty deserved better.
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