Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) is another in a long line of sequels trying to live up to the acclaim and success of Tobe Hooper’s original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), and just like all the others, it doesn’t quite get there. The most common mistake these sequels have made, including the recent Netflix original, is that they view Leatherface as the central piece of the story. They’ve made TCM into a series of slasher films when that was never the original intent. While Leatherface was the most noteworthy character from the original, one could argue he wasn’t even the central antagonist. The Sawyer family and not Leatherface was what made the original so horrifying.
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While one may call the sequels “studio films,” TCM (1974) was an indie film that bordered more on art house than something for mass audiences with allusions to the horror of the Vietnam War, the fear of suburbia crashing down, and the dangers of an idle mind faced with unemployment and a lack of purpose. There was depth to this film, while TCM (2022) relies on references to pop culture and mindless gore for shock value. In fact, TCM (1974) contained very little gore and direct violence on screen. What was horrifying was the imagery and set pieces, as well as the thought of what one didn’t see. With the recent installments of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, we’ve seen the series lose its heart and become an entirely different series of films, which is nothing like the original.
The Horrifying Backstory
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In The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Leatherface can be seen as almost sympathetic. While he does commit a series of murders in the film, they seem to be out of fear rather than hate. Played by the late Gunnar Hansen, Leatherface is a deformed man with an intellectual disability. His brother, The Hitchhiker, mocks him, and his father abuses him, seemingly pushing him into this world of savagery. He’s the black sheep of the family. After killing the first two teens in the film, Leatherface seems frightened, grasping at his mask. He doesn’t know who these people are or why they keep coming onto his property. He thinks there’s an army of people out to get him. He wears the skins of his victims on his face to hide his shame, likely due to his family and other children in his youth bullying him.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) is a sequel to the original. Still, Leatherface does not age, he’s not deformed anymore, and his multiple personalities have vanished and been replaced by an undefeatable brute, more like Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees. His character is entirely different, but so is the surrounding family.
With TCM (2022), Leatherface is given an entirely new family backstory, as a kid who grew up in an orphanage and was eventually raised by one of the orphanage caretakers, Ginny (Alice Krige). Even though this is supposed to be the same Leatherface who went toe-to-toe with Sally Hardesty in the original TCM, it appears odd that the motivation for his rage seems to be birthed at the moment when Melody (Sarah Yarkin) and Dante (Jacob Latimore) upset his adopted mother so much she has a heart attack. When Leatherface cuts Ginny’s face off and puts it on his own, it feels as though it’s an origin story and not a continuation.
In TCM (1974), Leatherface isn’t an orphan but a member of a family of former butchers known as the Sawyers. Ignoring TCM 2, even if his family did pass away, why would a grown man be placed in an orphanage? Drayton Sawyer, Grandpa, and The Hitchhiker could be argued to be more terrifying than Leatherface himself. Drayton, owning a gas station, plays the part of a kind proprietor, but beneath this is a penchant for savagery, hiding in plain sight. Grandpa is a hundred-year-old man who can barely move and is sustained by human blood, while The Hitchhiker is a mentally impaired and eccentric man who loves pain and fear. Each character accents one another perfectly, whereas, in Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022), you’re left with only Leatherface, whose only motivation seems to be anger.
Tackling Modern Themes in a Horrifying Way
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Two of the most important messages from TCM (1974) were related to the apocalyptic uncertainty of ’70s America. The nation was still recovering from the carnage in Vietnam, and the employment rate was at 7.2 percent, the highest since 1941, where it was 9.9 percent. In TCM (1974), a group of teens begins to vanish one by one, being killed in some of the most brutal ways possible with hammer and chainsaw. This was a reflection of the war at the time when the nation’s youth were vanishing in Vietnam to die gruesome deaths.
In a way, TCM (1974) challenged what was acceptable in terms of censors. Why was it okay to see actual carnage from the first televised war but not to see fictional violence criticizing actual violence? The dangers of unemployment to a psyche were also shown, as the Sawyers were butchers at a local slaughterhouse, laid off by technical automation. With few other skills and little education/gas shortages hampering their fuel depot, the Sawyers found themselves victims of the idle mind, praying on others to obtain wealth, meat, and purpose.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) tries to tackle two of the issues of our time, albeit it is in very confusing ways with gun violence and political correctness. The four teens in this sequel are millennials from Austin, Texas, traveling in their self-driving Tesla to showcase the small Texas town of Harlow to investors in hopes of gentrifying it and turning it into a mini-Austin. The locals warn them of respecting the town and their ways, but they don’t listen, leading to one of the film’s most confusing statements.
When the lone African-American member of the group, Dante, sees a Confederate flag waving above a house, he confronts the owner, Ginny, demanding she leaves as he now owns the land. This confrontation leads to Ginny having a heart attack, inspiring Leatherface’s rampage. It’s even stated later that she still owned the house, and Dante was in the wrong. So if Dante had just left the flag alone and accepted Ginny’s old ways, none of this would have happened? It’s a bit of an odd message.
Additionally, Lila (Elsie Fisher) seems to suffer PTSD from the high school shooting she survived, feeling guilty that she didn’t die too. How does she get over this PTSD? By shooting guns. Critics of the film’s themes have said that the creators were more interested in exploiting these issues than actually exploring them further.
A Haunting Ending
At the end of TCM (1974), Sally Hardesty escapes Leatherface with the help of a truck driver, laughing hysterically as he fades into the distance and wields his chainsaw in frustration. It’s a haunting ending because the Sawyers have driven Sally to the brink of madness, having to live with all the horrors she saw and friends she lost. It cuts to black as Leatherface dances with his saw. An ending enough to send chills down your spine, especially knowing that this family is still out there, unpunished. Considering the context of the time when the fear of serial killers popping up in suburbia, such as Ed Gein, was a growing concern, this ending is more terrifying, suggesting these killers are out there amongst us.
With Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022), the creators bring Sally Hardesty back so that she can get thrown around like a rag doll and Lila can obtain her shotgun. After Lila and Melody face-off with Leatherface, Melody hits him with his saw, and he falls into the water below. Of course, he’s floating, and of course, she doesn’t finish him off. As Lila and Melody drive away in their self-driving Tesla, Leatherface pulls Melody out as Lila screams in distress from the sunroof of the slow self-driving Tesla. It’s a cliché ending we’ve seen a thousand times in slasher films, and the image of the self-driving Tesla inching away in contrast with Leatherface holding a prosthetic head is more comedic than terrifying.
The franchise has drifted away from the subtext of the original and into mindless slasher territory, continuing the trend of isolating Leatherface as the only antagonist of the franchise, erasing the depth of his character, and marginalizing him as an indestructible brute. The originality has been lost, and the Sawyer family has been removed to focus on using Leatherface as a box office draw.
