Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) Review

 "Try anything and you're canceled, bro."

A group of entrepreneurs move to the nearly deserted town of Harlow, Texas in order to gentrify the place.  Unfortunately for them, one of the few remaining residents is Leatherface (Mark Burnham).  Leatherface slaughters the hipsters, which draws an old enemy to Harlow, Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré), the sole survivor of the original Massacre. 

What Works:

The 9th Texas Chainsaw Massacre film is one of the best comedies I have seen in a long time.  Granted, I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant to be a comedy, but some of the best comedies are unintentional.  I laughed so hard that it hurt while watching this film.  The characters, the dialogue, and some of the actions Leatherface takes are hilarious.  I think this film crosses into "so bad, it's good" territory, which I'm a fan of.

The one thing this movie gets right that I know was intentional is the gore.  This is probably the bloodiest movie in the series with a ton of gruesome kills.  If you're a gore-hound, like me, you'll enjoy this.  It's bloody, creative fun.

This is a very dumb movie.  I compare it a lot to Godzilla vs. Kong.  The characters suck and the stuff around Godzilla, Kong, or Leatherface isn't super interesting, but when it's time for the main event, it really works.  Whenever Leatherface is in action, this movie is awesome.  It's the perfect movie to watch with your friends while drinking some beer.  I was cheering at all of the kills and whenever Leatherface did something awesome.  It's an entertaining movie, even if it isn't highbrow by any means.

Finally, this movie is well paced.  It's barely 80 minutes long, and once Leatherface starts his killing spree, it doesn't really ever stop.  This movie just goes and goes and goes until it's over.  I don't like when slasher movies slow down too much and this one never does that once the chainsaw revs up.

What Sucks:

The biggest problem with the movie is the characters.  All of them are stupid, unlikable, or boring, if not all three.  Granted, this makes it much easier to cheer when they get killed off, but this movie would have been more intentionally effective if they fixed these characters.  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series has always had terrible victim characters, but that wasn't a tradition we needed to continue.

Our main protagonist, Lila (Elsie Fisher), is mostly boring, but that isn't even the biggest problem with her character.  Her backstory is that she's a survivor of a school shooting.  That's definitely a little bit on the tasteless side for this type of movie.  Still, they could have gotten away with it if Lila was better developed.  Either do more with that backstory or cut it out completely.  Instead, we get the worst of both worlds.

Finally, one of the biggest complaints I've heard about this film is that it doesn't do anything new with the series.  That's fair.  It's a pretty generic slasher, even if I found it fun.  Say what you will about Texas Chainsaw 3D and Leatherface, but at least they tried to do something different.

Verdict:

I had an absolute blast watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but not for the reasons the filmmakers intended.  It's hilarious, with awesome gore, solid pacing, and is simply entertaining.  The characters are terrible and the movie doesn't break new ground, but I still say it's got it going on.  It's my 4th favoite the series behind 1, 2, and 3D.

 7/10: Good