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Thread: Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) Netflix...

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    Team Rick MinionZombie's Avatar
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    Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) Netflix...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0livad7FbU

    The original directors were shafted (the footage shot was terrible, apparently).

    This was shot in that famous Texan location of ... ... Bulgaria.

    Anyway ... terribly generic trailer that failed to flutter my pulse or tingle my neck hairs one iota. Talk about a franchise that has been mangled more than any other. "Leatherface" (the most recent one) was okay-ish, but the connection was so thin that it didn't really feel like a TCM movie at all. Meanwhile, the one prior to that (TCM 3D) was dumb as a box of rocks (a baby grows up 40 years later to be in her 20s!!!)

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    Webmaster Neil's Avatar
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    Bulgaria?
    Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
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    Quote Originally Posted by Neil View Post
    Bulgaria?
    Good bang for your production dollar with professional local crew. Still ... not exactly Texas, is it?

    IIRC The Expendables 2 was shot in Bulgaria.

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    FFS.

    Can they not just let this thing die?

    The 1974 film was good even if it's incredibly overrated. But everything else has been absolute shite.
    I'm runnin' this monkey farm now Frankenstein.....

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    Well, it's just hit Netflix today and I've given it a spin - which didn't take long, as it's only 75 minutes before the credits roll (stick around for a brief scene after the credits).

    It seems, by re-introducing Sally Hardesty (played by a different actress), that they're going for a Halloween 2018 thing - however, Sally is so under-used that you kind of wonder why bother?

     
    Plus, it's kind of a 'fuck you', really. One of the original scream queens and final girls, and not only do they kill her, but they literally throw her into a pile of garbage! Errr ... what?!


    Her story is so sketch-thin that it holds no weight and, of course, there's the usual piss poor excuse for her to not shoot Leatherface when she's got him in her sights.
     
    You've been waiting FIFTY YEARS for this opportunity and not only did you completely fail to find a needle in a very small selection of needles, but you DON'T shoot him when you've got him point blank and caught off-guard because of your own fucking ego!!! Seriously - she gets hung up on the fact that Leatherface seemingly doesn't remember her ... well of course fucking not. What was a totally unique and horrifying day in Sally's life was just another day of the week for Leatherface ... not to mention: IT WAS FIVE DECADES AGO!!!


    The main protagonists are also intensely irritating: Gen Z hipsters with a bizarre idea to turn Harlow, a backwoods shit hole that's practically a ghost town, into some kind of cool new place for easily triggered ponces to get away from the challenges of modern life.

    Indeed, the opening portion of the movie is doused with 'social relevancy' - school shootings, racism, police stops, the Dixie flag - it's too busy, and leaves the characters as little more than a series of Twitter cliches. Melody, in particular, is a pretty rancid character - a self-righteous arse who has to tear down others with pathetic insults to make herself look tough (see the gas station encounter with Richter). That's one of the film's main faults - the characters are extremely irritating. You WANT to see them killed off ASAP. So where's the tension and suspense? You're just waiting for Leatherface to do his job. You don't need socially relevant, tortured souls with deep and meaningful backstories, or crushingly nice puppy adopters, or whatever - you just need decently written normal personalities who don't annoy you or, preferably, likeable characters you care about (at least somewhat) - see Friday 13th Part 4, as an example. Dante is just annoying, Ruth barely gets any screen time (let alone characterisation), so it's really only Lila who gets any kind of arc, and she's the only one who's passable (she's not overtly annoying, and she has a past trauma to surmount).

    Weirdly, though, this may be the intention of the script - to make these Gen Z hipsters actively awful so the viewer wants them dead - because, rather oddly, Leatherface becomes the righteous victim of this whole movie!

     
    I did like that Melody realises that THEY are the bad guys because they assumed the old lady no longer owned the building, that THEY were the owners of the building, and drove her to a deadly heart attack - the woman being Leatherface's caretaker, essentially, a woman who has spent her life running an orphanage for troubled children. Then along come these Gen Z douchebags who hound her into death. Essentially, they kill Leatherface's mother, so hell yeah he's justified in his spree of chainsaw-wielding slaughter!


    Some aspects of the movie are a fucking mess, some listed above, but the film also has some nice touches that work quite well. Certain sequences have lots of nice details (e.g. the blood oozing under the bathroom door, Leatherface emerging from the field of dead sunflowers), while there are some nicely directed scenes with a decent set up.

    The bus massacre was pretty good fun - although I could have done without the cringe-as-fuck line "Do anything and you'll get cancelled, bro" - it's just indulgent and clunky. Just have them raise their phones, idiots that they are, and let the carnage begin.

    Speaking of carnage - there's plenty of awesome gore and kills. So it certainly delivers on the splatter and gruesome stuff.

    Leatherface works pretty well, too, even if he's rather powerful for somebody who's in their mid-60s! Chuck someone halfway across a street? No problem! Mind you, it is great to see Leatherface whip out his classic yellow chainsaw, and I particularly liked how it was used in slightly different ways - such as throwing it across the ground to try and clip someone running away. I also liked how they staged some of his key scenes, and had him take the initiative when it was offered, launching into a full charge with his chainsaw roaring.

    The movie's well shot and looks the part, although its primarily limited to the town of Harlow (so there's little in the way of wide open exteriors or rural areas - it was shot in Bulgaria, which obviously ain't Texas, so I guess they were kinda limited in that regard).

    In terms of the three most recent TCM movies - TCM3D, Leatherface, and now Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) - it is, over-the-piece, the best of a bad bunch. It seriously falters in some regards, but then considerably delivers in other regards. Naturally, it's not a patch on TCM (1974), or TCM2, or even the 2003 remake and its 2006 prequel, but it's a middle-of-the-pack runner.

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