Aaron's Head Explodes Talking About Texas Chainsaw Massacre '22

  Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) isn't great...but it's not as bad as your timeline would have you believe...but it's also not as good as this whole setup makes it sound either.

Hear me out.

  Sensibly, I watched it with my seatbelt on because this is #9 and, on the heels of #8. Leatherface (2017) and #7. Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013), I was ready for disaster. I'd been following the production and marketing because I have an infinite, morbid curiosity for this franchise, stubbornly hoping that someday someone will come along and do something great with it*. Yes, I know how naive that is, why do you think I wore my seatbelt? For weeks I mocked it, deciding ahead of time how bad it would be (the terrible trailer that Netflix put out only fanned my flames). There were glimmers of optimism when the poster came out (which I adore) and a track from the score (which is fucking gnarly) and, after weeks of bellyaching about how bad I was sure it'd be...I had to hang my hat and eat my words.

Well. Kinda.

   First off, the photography is great; this shot of Bubba in a dead sunflower field is downright impressionistic. I've always loved the sunburnt southern gothic of the original and it's nice to have it back.

  I love his new look, too: the droopy face without the trademark stitching and patchwork is genuinely gruesome and distinct enough to be new. As for the rest of the movie there's some effectively tense set pieces, memorably brutal kills with gallons of gore, nice character moments (that include Bubba himself) and, again, some incredible music by Colin Stetson. His score is sinister, imposing, primal, industrial, filthy, and scary - the exact sonic terrain Bubba should traverse, yes, but... it's overqualified. The movie, on the whole, never matches its look and sound (much like Carpenter's work on Halloween 2018 and Kills). The ending is what does it in: it's a cheap, stupid, desperately tacked-on sequel-thirsty letdown. There's a nice, logical endpoint but we're subjected to a passing-of-the-baton scene for our new Final Girl and then a lame gotcha! jumpscare where Leatherface is still alive after a thorough butchering for the entire third act. Oh and then he does his 'dance' cuz fanservice [fart noise].

  Up until that increasingly annoying clusterfuck of a third act, this almost outdid every movie since the first one for me, which--I know--has been a low, low bar for a good while now. The Beginning, Texas Chainsaw 3D, and 2017's Leatherface are back-to-back embarrassing failures so this is, at most, a step up from those and, at least, far less obnoxious than Part 2 and much more entertaining than the perpetually forgettable Part 3. It's about on par with the unforgettable Next Generation which is a funny, bizarre, sometimes well-acted mess (props to McConaughey and Zellweger who, like Colin Stetson, exceeded everything else).

    I don't think time will change my opinion on it, either.

  After giving it some time, Candyman (2021) went from one of the most frustrating movies I'd ever seen to one of my favorite horror movies...period. I'm not forgiving its shortcomings, nor pretending they're not there, but when you spend enough time with a movie you realize what truly works and doesn't work for you - and how much tolerance you have for the latter. So, here's the thing: a B- is my lowest positive and a C is my highest negative. TCM'22 is a C+ because it's complicated: C+ is the frustrating midway point between good and bad. Candyman's flaws are 96% tolerable; the shit that used to subtract from it is [for the most part] drowned out by its excellence. It's not perfect but I'll take it for what it is. TCM'22's flaws aren't nearly as tolerable as Candyman's. For instance, the shoehorning of Sally Hardesty is as intrusive and out of character as it sounds. She was the one thing I didn't like...until she turns out to be a nice dash of schlock and sorta what I wanted 2018 Laurie Strode to be. Instead of a gun-toting badass heroine, she's genuinely [and entertainingly] fucking insane. There's no Dr. Sartain plot device to manufacture a meeting for her and Bubba. She shows up and he's completely indifferent to her, so much so that he walks right past her and her shotgun. She recklessly throws herself in his path and then lives longer than she logically should, out of sheer spite (and to give some nicely-delivered but clunkily-written advice to our new heroine). Otherwise, I like the characters. I thought the young folks would all be vapid, annoying, and stupid but our two leads surprised me with how likable and sympathetic they are. And I thought the locals would be stock redneck stereotypes, the typical harbingers-of-doom, ignorance, and menace, but they all end up feeling like regular-ass people - one of them, Richter, being my favorite character in the movie. And, thankfully, none of them turn out to be a secret Sawyer relative. Now, I love Leatherface's relatives, more than him, even, but the first twist I expect in one of these movies is that some innocuous character is actually Bubba's cousin or whatever.

  This franchise is dead because no one understood it and they tried too hard to understand it. It's not tragedy, it's Horror; random, nihilistic, mindless brutality - plain and simple. This movie, thankfully, treats Bubba like the first movie does: even in his 60s he's a giant, violent, scared child. There's no pop psychology trying to 'understand' him. Leatherface (2017) treated the Chainsaw itself like some mythic talisman and it's done with straight-faced seriousness so there's nothing fun (like this fucking wild trailer for Part III). It's given to him as a birthday gift and his arc sees him being driven to use it in some dumb embrace-your-fate kind of whatever. It's as much of an origin story for his tool as it his for him (but what about his hammers and hooks, where are their movies??). Prying open his origin isn't even going back far enough; in the original '74 film we heard stories of Grandpa's legend throughout and, judging by his feeble body and decrepit skin, Grandpa lived a long life. So this means the violence in Leatherface wasn't caused by some watershed trauma, he was born into an ancient and neverending chasm that chewed him up. Like The Hitchhiker and The Cook he's a monster churned out by a cyclical grind of generational bloodshed ad infinitum; a continuum of violence where there's no room for the comfortable rationale of armchair psychology. TCM'22 is a return-to-basics where, this time, he dusts off the chainsaw not as a born-for-this Excalibur but as a toy he's sneaking out of his Mom's room.

  My favorite sequence from any of these movies is the opening credits of the first one where we hea news stories on the radio about deadly freak accidents, terroristic sabotage, random violent outbursts, mob barbarity, etc. Soundtracked by a dissonant metallic soundscape amidst undulating red psychedelia it's incredibly effective and perfectly sets the tone. Keeping with the nihilistic, pointless violence theme: our Final Girl in TCM'22 is a survivor/PTSD-stricken victim of a school shooting, which was the initial detail that made me preemptively hate this movie. It sounded like it was going to be in extremely poor taste but, shockingly, it's handled delicately. Her story is one of probably hundreds considering how often we have Mass Shootings, which are the new avenue for 'serial killing'. She even has a line that hit with more weight than I expected it to:

  They never overdo it with her PTSD to the point where she's sheepish but she's also not a condescendingly 'strong' girlboss, either. In fact, I was worried that her arc would be that she learns how to use a gun to magically 'fix' her Trauma but she not only fails to use a gun, guns are shown as ineffective throughout. Anyone with a gun either escalates shit or is no match for Bubba's butcher tools. Any and all criticisms that it's 'vague' or 'misguided' on the gun debate clearly didn't pay attention. I'll also wager they didn't pay attention to any of the nice performances by the side characters. Like me, people went into this movie already dismissing it. Now, it doesn't reinvent the wheel, no, but it's far better than it has any reason to be and I'll take that.
 

  *I'd mentioned waiting around for someone to do something great with this franchise to Jacob and he said something incredibly sobering: The Devil's Rejects. It's not a literal limb from the original IP but goddamn if it's not the best [spiritual] Sequel this franchise could ever have, even if it's a phantom feeling. Hell, House Of 1000 Corpses has long been called 'derivative' of TCM sequels but it has far more personality and it's much more entertaining than any sequel, remake, prequel in the entire TCM output. By that logic, Rejects is the most mature and expertly-crafted continuation. Look at Tiny as Bubba and the movie follows his relatives instead - they've always been more sadistic than he is. So that's where I'm at with this franchise: I'll welcome any and all takes on this property because it can't exactly be 'ruined.' We're far past the point of necrosis so we might as well give any sign of life a chance. Nothing will ever match the original or Rejects so I'm set.