Texas Chainsaw Massacre Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs

Downs...

5. It Shamelessly Rips Off Halloween 2018

The film's trailers made it clear that Texas Chainsaw Massacre is blatantly trying to give the series the Halloween 2018 treatment - that is, deliver a direct sequel to the beloved original that basically forgets the divisive sequels while bringing the original heroine back into the fold.

While this movie doesn't explicitly jettison the prior sequels from the continuity as David Gordon Green's Halloween did, it absolutely downplays them to the point where fans are basically free to decide for themselves what is and isn't canon.

It's a bit of a cowardly, non-committal approach to the series' mythology, though the bigger issue is the movie's utterly piecemeal, low-effort attempt to invest the audience in a belated second showdown between Leatherface (Mark Burnham) and original survivor Sally Hardesty (played here by Olwen Fouéré, subbing in for the late Marilyn Burns).

Not dissimilar to Halloween's Laurie, Sally is now a grey-haired, badass survivalist who attests she's been waiting an entire half-century to take revenge against Leatherface.

And yet, Sally feels less like a character here than a prop to mine fan nostalgia for the original film.

Her role is mostly saved for the third act, and smacks of the filmmakers attempting to desperately inject some emotion and gravity into a fundamentally schlocky horror movie.

It doesn't really work - the Sally subplot ends up feeling like a tacked-on reshoot, and the rushed payoff is sure to leave those who were interested in seeing Sally again totally underwhelmed.