The original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre actually predated the original Halloween by four years, but now it’s the former’s turn to follow in the footsteps of the latter, resulting in a case of the blind leading the blind. This new Texas Chainsaw Massacre takes its cues from the recent Halloween and Halloween Kills, going as far as dusting off the franchise’s original Final Girl – the character, that is; Marilyn Burns, the actress who played the first Sally Hardesty, died in 2014, and she certainly is in a better place now (i.e., not in this movie).
Generally speaking, though, the only thing that separates this from pretty much every slasher film ever made is that, instead of the usual Dead Teenager Movie, Massacre ‘22 may very well be the first-ever Dead Millennial Movie. Speaking of which the kills, which have the power to save even the most generic and derivative of horror sequels, are another disappointment; only the first one, involving a very creative use of the bone shard sticking out of a compound fracture, shows any ingenuity.
The best thing that can be said of this uninspired effort is that it’s short (shorter still considering that about 10 of its 81 minutes are devoted to the closing credits); then again, any movie is bound to be brief that lacks a proper conclusion – and I’m not referring to the fact that when Sally, who has been hunting Leatherface down “for more than 30, 40 years”, finally has him cornered, she apparently decides, all of a sudden, that after having waited multiple decades for this moment, she might as well wait a bit longer; after all, what’s another five more minutes between old friends? This is excruciatingly stupid, but if the movie ended there it wouldn't be any more unsatisfying than the actual ending.
And the worst that can be said of TCM ‘22 is that it has the gall to draw a parallel between the titular chainsaw massacre and a high school shooting (“Stonebrook High”, which sounds very uncomfortably like Stoneman Douglas High School), as if a dumb movie that deals in gratuitous violence and doesn’t even have the decency to provide a cathartic resolution could ever find a way to connect emotionally to the victims of a real-life massacre. This is low, even by exploitation cinema’s sub-standards.
