Our beloved face-skinning, chainsaw-wielding Bubba is back in a major way, despite the film around him struggling desperately to keep up.
When I first saw the trailer for this film, I predicted a non-stop groan fest with no redeeming qualities. This is not that, but it has as many upsides as it does problems. In short, it’s better than you’d think, but way worse than you’d hope.
Thematically, the film’s backbone is a lot like the spines the Sawyer family cover their furniture with: more decorative than they are substantive. Racism, gentrification, gun control, it’s sprinkled here and there, but all underdeveloped. There’s a line from the side character Catherine where she says people like things worn down, “they want the history,” she claims, but people don’t want the history of a place, flaws and all. It feels like an appropriate metaphor for how the film looks for meaning, but doesn’t take the time to develop that meaning through conversation.
Leatherface Shines: The Big Boy Delivers
But you didn’t come here for social commentary, did you? You want the BIG BOY. Yes, Leatherface is great in this movie; against all the odds, he’s still fun as hell to watch. He doesn’t have the depth that Thomas Hewitt did, or the big heart of the second film’s Bubba Sawyer, but he doesn’t quite need it. His personality boils down to a grieving, mentally stunted man-child, and actor Mark Burnham portrays that and the hulking hillbilly’s physicality PERFECTLY. He’s sloppy, clumsy, prone to bursts of speed and lightning-fast violence, and all in all menacing in his simplicity. Burnham carries the action, works those set pieces, and picks up the slack with kills where the effects falter.
The acting in this ranges from enjoyable to unbearable. Lila is a compelling character, and Elsie Fisher’s performance sells her. On the other hand, despite being whom we follow for most of the runtime, Mel doesn’t have the same depth despite Sarah Yarkin’s fine-tuned ability to portray pure fear. Lila falls to the background until the film’s ACTUAL climax, which is a shame because the fantastic Fisher becomes fantastically underused as a result. And what can you do about the cannon fodder cast? Everybody else is forgettable, unflavored meat for the grinder, which is fine; after all, you can’t make a sausage without chopping up a few yuppies.
The Misstep of Sally Hardesty’s Strode-ification
The Strode-ification of Sally Hardesty, on the other hand, is truly awful. It’s downright silly in a way that is equal parts comedically bad and dramatically insufferable, so you’ll be able to source some laughs from it at least. Olwen Fouéré chews the scenery as she treats this rivalry that popped up 48 minutes ago like a clash 48-years in the making. The subplot is ultimately unnecessary and treats itself way too seriously; the writers should have probably taken a page from Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2‘s book and played her derangement more like Dennis Hopper’s chainsaw crazy Lieutenant Lefty.
The film, in its score, tries to mimic the dark ambient noise of the original, but it doesn’t have nearly as much texture or grit; it’s not scratchy in the richly mixed audio sense of the 1974 soundtrack; it’s just grating industrial noises that scratch your eardrums unpleasantly. Nowhere is this more evident than Richter’s very loud death. They try to evoke the original through this type of sound, but it’s not nearly as impactful since it feels like a failed attempt to cover up some bad sound design. This, combined with some bad CGI for the kill, took a death I would have been impressed by and turns it into a sloppy mess.
Visual Effects and Cinematography: Hit or Miss
Speaking of CGI, the effects in this film oscillate from really good to really bad at an alarming rate. The policemen and Ruth’s murders? Fantastic. Richter’s skull getting caved in? Hideous. Sally finding Mrs. Mc’s with a skinned-off face? Incredible. The bus slaughter? Woof, the over-reliance on CGI blood in that scene is a tragedy. Some parts are just egregiously bad for a film that clearly has good practical effects on hand. The cinematography altogether is nothing to write home about, with truly weird editing choices in the film’s final act, and some camerawork generating a few cool but not super memorable shots.
If there’s one positive note I can close out on, it’s this film’s ending being one of the most insane I’ve seen in a while, feeling like a Texas Chainsaw parody of A Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s a campy, ridiculous set of final frames that I’m kind of in love with for being that bold; I might return to this just for that closer, especially with that corset tight runtime of 73 minutes, not counting credits. If only the rest of the film was that off the wall.
BOTTOMLINE: I have very mixed feelings about this one. It did not commit the cardinal sin of being boring and is very entertaining at certain points, but I can’t in good faith say this is a good movie. It will most definitely generate a split audience. Fans of Leatherface like myself will enjoy his rampage, but not the kind of terrible filmmaking surrounding that carnage. If you turn your brain off, this is a fine watch, but don’t expect anything higher grade than a gory popcorn flick if you’re checking it out this weekend.