The new Texas Chainsaw Massacre deals with every kind of violence, including school shootings
There’s really only one requirement for a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie: Unsuspecting Horror-Movie Targets need to get massacred with a chainsaw, preferably in Texas. So when director David Blue Garcia stepped in to make a new installment of the franchise, producer Fede Álvarez — a certifiable maestro of mayhem after directing 2013’s Evil Dead and 2016’s Don’t Breathe — made the priorities clear.
“Audiences expect more, they want to get wowed, they want to be shocked,” Garcia tells Polygon. “Fede taught me to get creative with the kills, and use more blood than you think you need to. If you didn’t get it, right, reset, even if it takes an hour, then shoot it again, because that’s the stuff that people are coming to see.”
Garcia is quick to note that the violence in Netflix’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre — a direct sequel to Tobe Hooper’s original 1974 movie, much like 2018’s Halloweendirectly follows the 1978 original — is “not violence for violence sake.” Inspired by the way Hooper’s anti-Vietnam-war rage blossomed into the grungy slasher-movie milestone, Garcia’s film deals in social commentary even as Leatherface disembowels his victims. But unlike the original, it isn’t allegory. The 2022 Texas Chainsaw Massacre directly grapples with gun violence in America and the trauma of school shootings. Between scenes of intense splatter violence, Garcia threads scenes of intense real-life violence.
In the sequel, two Instagram-brained chefs, Melody (Sarah Yarkin) and Dante (Jacob Latimore), descend upon a Texas ghost town with hopes of revitalizing it into a haven for avocado toast. But the locals aren’t keen on Austinites invading their lives on the fringe — especially a burly man who enjoys wearing human-skin masks. So sparks
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