Texas Chainsaw Massacre — Holy Sh*t
It’s now 2:06 am, I’m alone! It’s dark and stormy outside and I guess watching the newest Netflix-release wasn’t the best idea. (mainly spoilerfree)
A coworker of mine told me today at work, that today the new TCM was released. Seemingly it was supposed to be a sequel to the first one, the only survivor of the original was supposed to appear. I didn’t know anything about it, haven’t seen a trailer — that movie has flown under my radar. But I immediately got hyped!
I’ve seen the original one, from 1973, so long ago that I can’t really remember it.
I’ve seen the Remake, which was release in 2003 and I don’t remember much of that either except that it left me quite unimpressed.
But I still remembered leather face, though.
Leather face… An iconic horror character, not quite as mainstream as Jason Voorheese from “Friday the 13th” Franchise or Michael Meyers from the recently as well sequeled “Halloween” series (also a very good one), but somehow with his fetish to wear faces as masks and his tendency to more butcher people than actually kill them. Let’s stick the landing and say there’s a reason why he stuck around for almost half a century as well.
The movie
Is it the best horror movie I’ve ever seen? No, clearly not. The first 20 minutes were almost tedious in my opinion, but nevertheless somehow the introduced 4 characters (just as in the original) were interesting enough to keep me going.
And when it started it really did! And it didn’t stop. Even now, almost 15 minutes later I have the feeling the pace of the movie hasn’t lost its grip on me.
(edit: it’s now 2:52 am and I’m finishing this article right now. The movie finally let go of me)
I don’t want to go to much into detail (as I promised, no spoilers in here) but I have to mention one thing: “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is one of the most brutal films I’ve ever seen being on Netflix. Leather face provides a good portion of dismembering as usual. I’d even go so far as to say a bit more than usual, perhaps too much for some and the movie shows almost everything. At least I couldn’t detect an obvious cut scene.
Is brutality coming back to hack & slay horror?
It seems to be a phenomena that just recently is getting picked up again. In the newest “Halloween” Release I got a similar impression, that they dialed up the brutality quite a bit, remembering me about the old classics that have been mainly popular in the old classics from the 70’s and 80’s. And here TCM really delivers and dials it up even more. It’s shocking, it has jump-scares, quite interesting uses of the chain-saw. I have to admit at some scenes I had to take a look away (even though that’s not unusual for me, it just hasn’t happened in quite a while).
If this trend should continue the new “Scream” movie that’s coming could get even more interesting.
What it lacked
I know, I know, to complain about story depths in a movie like that is quite strange, as I’m assuming most people will explicitly watch it for the gore. But within it’s short running-time the movie would have benefitted from 20–30 minutes more backstory focussed screentime. It would have been quite interesting to learn more about the survivor from the original, how did she spend her time and something like that. As she was the nostalgia-flashback to the cult-original that would have provided the movie with some interesting possibilities that would have provided a more well-rounded foundation to the movie. The way it is it really mostly just seems to be made for the gore. And it deserves its R-Rating unquestionably.
Summary — I recommend it if…
I still liked the movie, as much as you can like a movie like this without raising the question in my dear 5 readers a month if something might be wrong with me. It was much harder to watch than I expected initially, much more of a rollercoaster-ride. But this kind of emotional reaction hasn’t been happening for me in a horror movie for the longest time. The movie literally flew by like a chainsaw (common, give me the bad pun, please. I’m alone and a little scared). What the movie also did very well was playing with the viewers expectations. Watch it, you will see what I mean afterwards. Just don’t make the same mistake as I did. The result might be a very strange feeling and an acute awareness that you are alone right now!
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Anyways, thanks for making it this far, have a beautiful day, where ever you are.
