‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ Film Review: Latest Sequel Delivers the Gory Goods

thewrap.com:

definitely be important later is one massive oversight: This ghost town’s still got people in it. An old lady named Mrs. Mc (Alice Krige, “Gretel and Hansel”) is pretty sure she still owns the deed to her mysterious and creepy orphanage, which has only one old, gigantic, and horrifying orphan left, whose name — as you can probably guess — rhymes with “Pleatherface.”One unfortunate altercation later, and Leatherface is left all alone without the only person who, apparently, knew how to keep him from mass-murdering everybody in the world with a chainsaw.

When Leatherface falls off the wagon, he falls hard, and the remainder of Garcia’s “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” sequel is little more than a running kill count as this iconic villain rips apart every single human being he can find.Tobe Hooper’s original “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” retains its phenomenal power as a result of its stark realism, which gradually gives way to a shocking nightmare.

Hooper’s original 1986 sequel tore all that seriousness away in favor of an over-the-top chainsaw-duelling bullet train to hell, with meat on the menu.

Ever since, the films in this franchise seem to have waffled between absurdist gory camp and oppressively violent nihilism. Most of the movies in the “Texas Chainsaw” series have at least some fans, but very few feel like they take place in the same universe.With this new film, David Blue Garcia (“Tejano”) — working from a functional but unremarkable screenplay by Chris Thomas Devlin (“Cobweb”), based on a story by Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues (“Don’t Breathe”) — has no lofty ambitions.