Leatherface returns in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a direct sequel to the franchise’s original masterpiece. A new opus produced by Fede Álvarez that honors Tobe Hooper’s classic?
Chainsaw Massacre: direct sequel to Tobe Hooper’s classic
In 1974, Tobe Hooper revolutionized horror cinema with Chainsaw Massacre. A feature film that is partly inspired by the Ed Gein murders and which deals with isolation, as well as the divide between rural and urban America. In the film, five carefree young people arrive in a remote corner of Texas in a minibus. Despite a warning about the inhospitality of some locals, the group stops near an old isolated farmhouse. It does not take long to discover that it is about the property of a cannibalistic family.
Almost fifty years later and after several sequels, a remake, and two prequels, Chainsaw Massacre gets a makeover under the guidance of producer Fede Álvarezthe new darling of the horrific landscape to which we owe in particular evil Dead and Don’t Breathe: The House of Darkness. Like Halloween by David Gordon Green released in 2018, this new ignores its predecessors to establish itself as a direct sequel to the original masterpiece.
Leatherface (Mark Burnham) – Chainsaw Massacre ©netflix
And like Michael Myers, Leatherface (Mark Burnham) may have aged, but he hasn’t lost any of its aggressiveness and its deadly power. A refugee in a ghost town for several decades after being collected from an orphanage, the killer comes out of his lair when four influencers arrive in order to attract investors to make this deserted city a new popular place in Texas. Meanwhile, Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré), the sole survivor of the first opus, is still traumatized by the nightmare she lived through and dreams of revenge. Sarah Yarkin, Elsie Fisher, Nell Hudson, Jacob Latimore, and Moe Dunford round out the cast of Chainsaw Massacre.
Leatherface’s New Butcher Shop
Tobe Hooper’s film aroused horror making the discomfort last certain sticky and deeply unhealthy sequences, including those of the hitchhiker and the meal. Violence was most often suggested, playing for example more on sound effects than on a graphic representation. Conversely, the director David Blue Garcia proposes here visual carnage.
Displaying practically the same duration as its model (1h21 against 1h23), Chainsaw Massacre does not bother to build up the suspense, offers spectators a reunion with Leatherface after a few minutes, and plunges him into chaos barely the first quarter of an hour has passed.
In addition to doubling down on ingenious ideas in the many executions that make you want to adopt a meatless diet, like the first film, the feature film shows no mercy for characters who fall one after the other. others. David Blue Garcia turns his ghost town into an open-air slaughterhouse where Leatherface stands out as the head butcher. The spectator sees certain passages coming but does not expect such a torrent of rage, blood, and mud, where only the frantic movements of a paralyzing killer count who, despite his heavy and hazardous gait, remains the most savage of among all.
Chainsaw Massacre is to be discovered on Netflix from February 18, 2022.
