In the new fad of pretending that sequels never existed so we can create confusing timelines, we get this TCM which is a sequel to the 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Oh, and it says “from the team behind “Don’t Breathe” and “Evil Dead“. If that’s a selling point, let’s take a moment to mourn for your loss in taste of horror films. Have I mentioned just how much I hate that Evil Dead reboot? Oh, probably in over ten reviews now.
I don’t recognize many people in this cast, which is fine. That is normal for a TCM film. I know Alice Krige from Silent Hill. William Hope was in Aliens. Those are the only 2 names that stood out as people who I may know. Okay, technically a third in that John Larroquette does some narration.
Start Film
Alright, so we have 4 main characters at the moment. Melody (curly hair), Lila (Melody’s sister), Dante (the only dude), and Ruth (Dante’s girlfriend). Okay, I thoroughly enjoy Richter, a man from around these parts. The plan is to remake this ghost town called Harlow into a new, safe environment for young people who wish to get away from big cities. Fair enough.
They end up in an orphanage where Ginny and her boy still live, but they were supposed to have been out months ago. Ginny is played by Alice. Ginny has a heart attack. All the prospective buyers or investors are on their way, so Ruth rides with the sheriffs to get Ginny to the hospital. We meet Catherine, the banker that helped this group get everything together. Ginny dies on the way in the van. Her boy, who is most likely Leatherface, snaps the wrist of the deputy in the back and kills him. Then there’s a gunshot and the Sheriff driving dies. The van crashes.
Lila and Richter strike up a conversation. Lila was shot in a school shooting previously, so she doesn’t like guns. Melody got a text from Ruth telling her that the old lady died. Melody wants her sister to leave with her now. Ruth is on the verge of having a very bad time. Ruth gets on the CB and quietly asks for help and gave her location while watching Leatherface cut Ginny’s face off and wears it. I will give Ruth credit, she tried all the right things there. I don’t know what type of shoes she was wearing, but running was the only other option. But in a strange location compared to a local, those aren’t great odds. Ruth gets her belly sliced open.
Richter takes the keys to the car and the bus. He wants proof that these people actually own the home that they kicked Ginny out of. Naturally, Dante doesn’t have that proof with him. The guy at the gas station heard Ruth on the CB and gets a hold of Sally Hardesty, the original survivor from TCM. She is now a Texas Ranger and she gets dressed to take care of business. Dante and Melody decide to look in the home for the deed or proof that Ginny was evicted or whatever. Melody finds the deed. There is someone else in the house. We can make assumptions.
Dante just met Leatherface and his cleaver. Melody sees this and hides in a closet. Nobody would ever think to look there. He immediately goes for the closet, but she is very well hidden behind some dresses. Leatherface smells a dress and then applies makeup to his mask. Leatherface now notices there’s a large group of people outside by the van. I sense a massacre is upon us.
Melody wastes so much time in the room looking out the window that Leatherface comes back up and decides to do some interior remodeling. He’s breaking the wall down like he’s Chris Jericho. Dante is still alive and able to leave the house. Catherine goes out to see Dante and Richter also sees him Dante’s face was a mess and he dies. Richter tells Catherine to call the police and Richter loads his gun. I feel like I would have gotten the bigger gun upstairs.
Leatherface finds a chainsaw behind the wall. Why was there a chainsaw behind a wall? Is that a stupid question or am I being reasonable? Richter approaches the bedroom. Melody angles the mirror with her foot so Richter can see Leatherface, and now it’s a fight. Richter’s ankle is snapped. Then he gets the upper hand until he gets his throat cut by a shard of glass, and then gets his head pounded repeatedly by the hammer.
Sally gets to the scene of the accident and finds Ginny sitting upright with no face. That was creepy. Lila gets off the bus. Melody gets the keys off of Richter’s body. We got about 30 minutes left. This got a 4.8 on IMDB and I am starting to see why.
Melody tries to be a ninja and escape over the stairway but Leatherface hucks the hammer and knocks her flying through the floor. Now she is being pursued. This feels like Don’t Breathe. Now, I have never wielded a chainsaw in my life. I feel that cutting through the floorboards so quickly and in a relatively straight line would be more difficult than it seemed here. Also, he cut the sewage pipe so Melody is covered in nastiness. Lila gets there in time to help Mel escape.
They make it to the bus, the bus starts, and they’re moving. We see Leatherface a good 10-20 feet away. Then the bus shakes a little. Why did you stop the bus, sir??? Seriously, you know bad things are happening, and you just saw two girls crying and running for their lives, one is covered in sewage. Is this the best time to get out? And he now longer has a head. And now Leatherface gets on the bus. Katherine, you gon’ get got. Seriously everyone gets their phones out. One dude says “Try anything and you’re canceled, bro.” They want us to actively cheer on Leatherface, I think.
Does nobody know how to exit the bus? Lila has the right idea. Lay low. Nope, Melody picks her up and they hide in the bathroom. So they have no emergency exit? Oh, there’s a hatch at the top of the bathroom. Katherine finally opens a window, they just slide open. Nobody could figure that out beforehand? Katherine and all party people are dead now. Leatherface saws through the bathroom door but the girls narrowly escape. As they run away, Sally shows up.
Sally won’t leave. She’s been waiting 50 years to get him. She will use the girls as bait to kill him. Are they trying to make her a Laurie Strode figure from the recent Halloween trilogy?
This is so dumb. Sally goes inside the house and finds Leatherface. She wants him to acknowledge that he remembers her. He doesn’t remember her and just walks away. He goes for the vehicle. Sally shoots him once, and then he runs away. Sally gives the girls the keys and tells them to leave.
It’s nighttime. Sally has very low visibility but can hear him. He charges, and she shoots. Doesn’t matter. He goes for it. She stabs him in the belly and he chainsaws her right through the torso. I have so many complaints.
So Melody is smart enough to see this and drive away, right? Nope, she speeds toward Leatherface, he throws the chainsaw at the windshield and they may barely graze him and instead go through a building and crash.
At this point, even if you typically don’t cheer on the killer, you may be thinking to yourself, these ladies are pretty dumb. I have no idea how Sally is still breathing. Melody has a rod through her thigh and she can’t remove it. So she shall be the sacrifice so Lila can run and make poor decisions. Melody apologizes for what happened to his momma. Leatherface was considering this. Lila pops back in with a gun and goes to shoot him, but the gun doesn’t fire. I feel morally defeated. That was Richter’s gun, I think. Leatherface for the kill and Sally shoots him once, misses a second time. He goes into the movie theater. There are 10-15 minutes left.
Sally tells Lila to not run because he will never stop haunting her. Sally drops her gun after she reloads it and dies. Melody is begging for help. So, do you go help your sister who is horrified and has no idea what is happening, or do you hunt this dude who has just killed 15-20 people, including the lady who is clearly a bigger badass than you? You know the answer.
I wish I could just speed up the time rather than skip 10 seconds. I would watch this at 8x speed and be done in 2 minutes. Leatherface left his chainsaw idling to fool Lila and then he spears her from outta nowhere into the hole in the floor that is filled with water. Why was that there? How did Leatherface pop out of the water with 2/3 of his body popping out? Why do I care?
He gets the chainsaw. She goes for the gun. He slides the chainsaw and gets her Achille’s tendon, perhaps. He now has her where he wants her. She rolls over in a prone position. Melody makes the save and hops on his back. She’s about to die, and Lila with the gun. But she only had 2 shots. He’s on the verge of falling. Melody picks up the chainsaw and uppercuts him in the face with it. He falls in the water and slowly sinks. Why would he sink? Wouldn’t he float? Where’s Pennywise when you have questions about floating?
In the morning, Lila finds Sally’s hate and the picture that she has been carrying around. Time to drive home. Lila says that she will move here with Melody. Leatherface suddenly reaches in and pulls out Melody and quickly beheads her and does his twirl and victory dance as Lila can only look on as the car drives itself.
After the credits we see Leatherface walking to his family’s farm. Cool.
End Film
What was the point of that? Maybe they need to make films so often due to trademarks or copyrights? That’s actually how the last company lost the franchise and they had plans for 5 future films planned out after Leatherface. I think I would like to know where they would have taken the franchise.
I am going to resist any further Fede Alvarez films. I don’t think he makes movies that are good to me. Technically, they are fine. I hate the writing though.
I still believe that the Sally character was only brought back due to what the Halloween franchise was doing. The scary thing is that if someone can ever make a Friday the 13th film ever again, I could see them trying to bring the original last girl back. In all fairness, Nightmare on Elm Street did this idea way back in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, because they brought back Heather/Nancy. But that wasn’t a sequel reboot. I suppose they could bring Nancy back and make a new Part 2. I am positive that Robert Englund is no longer up for that role. They could always animate it though!
I have no idea which characters I was supposed to like or dislike. I was on board with Richter the entire time. I also liked Ginny and she was perhaps the most sympathetic character. You want to potentially like Lila, but she did so many dumb things in the final third of the film. Even Leatherface didn’t do it for me this time around. By the time he got to killing the annoying people, I mentally had started checking out. I even read that the characters were meant to be in the greyish void because neither side is 10% right or wrong. I am okay with that. But there’s a difference between whether a character is good or bad compared to how likable they are to viewers. Horror fans love flawed characters who are on the bad side of the morality scale if the character is interesting enough or developed well.
The pacing was okay, made sense, and that’s how you make an 80-minute movie. I just didn’t care for the story and feel that it is just a placeholder for the inevitable sequel where Leatherface finally makes it home.
But wait, this is a sequel to the original. Was Ginny any relation? Did she just take him in? We go from the crazy ending of the first film to this film, chronologically speaking. So that is definitely something that they could have explored a little deeper. Ginny could have used a bit more screen time anyway. She was a strong character. This is supposed to be 40 years later and Leatherface doesn’t strike me as a Just For Men type of guy who is dying his hair. He would be 60 or so, in this film. So why not age him? It’s not like they tried to swerve us into who Leatherface might be, unlike in the film, Leatherface. They were very upfront about it. Gunnar Hansen was approximately 25 at the time of filming the original TCM which would put Leatherface at 65.
Also, why did they do the ending like that? Did they have a 60-minute film and then knew that they had to drag out the ending? Melody was hurt, but she was moving adequately for someone who just had a rod impaling her thigh. Yes, you can say adrenaline, I get it, but still. How is Leatherface able to pop so high out of the water but then sink like nothing minutes later? Am I overthinking this? I was never good at science, so perhaps there are good reasons for this. Still, the horrible decisions in the final 20 minutes were non-stop and became cringeworthy.
This movie simply wasn’t for me. The fact that it got a 4.8 on IMDB tells me that there were a ton of people who love Leatherface and loved the bus scene and probably gave it a higher rating than it deserved. Then if you look at the reviews and scores given. Here are the scores for the first page of reviews, keep in mind that these numbers are based on a scale of 1 through 10.
1, 3, 2, 4, 4, 4, 1, 5, 1, 1, 4, 3, 1, 7, 5, 3, 2, 6, 3, 1, 1, 4, 3, 4, 1
Now, I am no mathematician, ladies and gentlemen, but those 25 numbers add up to 74, and then if you divide that by 25 to get the average, you get 2.96 out of 10. I’m not going to go through more reviews, I feel like this is what I would expect. A few people liked it, but a lot of people just like to give 1’s when in reality, it is closer to a 2 or a 3.
Final Rating: 3.2 – I’m feeling generous tonight with that score.
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