A new video for Texas Chainsaw Massacre breaks down every kill in this year’s grizzly sequel/reboot. Tobe Hooper’s original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre from 1974 has gone down as one of the best horror films of the ‘70s, introducing the world to the now iconic Leatherface. However, since then, all sequels, reboots, and prequels have struggled to match the success of the original. The most recent attempt, David Blue Garcia’s sequel/reboot simply titled Texas Chainsaw Massacre, retconned all other movies aside from the original and brought back Sally Hardesty, this time played by Olwen Fouéré. Unfortunately, like most entries to this long-running horror franchise, the reboot received largely negative reviews upon release.
Even though Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a disappointment for many, there’s no denying the film was filled with brutal kills. One of the earliest murders shows Leatherface breaking a paramedic’s arm and stabbing him in the throat with his own shattered bone. Things only get more intense from there, with Leatherface bashing a character’s head in with a sledgehammer and later mowing down a bus full of people with his chainsaw. Even Sally gets a horrifying death by getting impaled with a chainsaw, lifted up into the air, and thrown across the street.
One of the latest videos from Dead Meat breaks down all of these kills and the others from the sequel/reboot, highlighting Leatherface’s fondness for chucking his weapons at his victims this time around. At 38 kills, 2022’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the deadliest movie in the franchise, nearly doubling the number of kills in the previous film, 2017’s Leatherface. All of Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s kills and more fun stats can be seen in Dead Meat’s video below:
Gore was noticeably absent from the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre but was still incredibly eerie, which is part of the reason it has become a horror classic. The latest film took the opposite approach, prioritizing graphic kills over a solid story, a trope many horror movies unfortunately fall into. Some of the biggest complaints were Sally being shoehorned into the plot as well as the Sawyer family being absent when they had previously been intrinsically linked to Leatherface’s motivations and emotions. Sally’s return was strikingly similar to Laurie Strode’s triumphant return in 2018’s Halloween, yet Texas Chainsaw Massacre failed to deliver a worthwhile character arc in favor of giving Leatherface another bloody kill.
The reviews for Texas Chainsaw Massacre may have been bad, but the film was still a success for Netflix. In the first three days of its release, it was streamed for over 29 million hours. Given the film’s post-credits scene and Garcia’s previous comments about having ideas for a sequel, it seems likely Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 will happen. The latest film was never expected to break the mold of the horror franchise, and it’s clear some audiences just tune in to watch Leatherface go around butchering people in a grizzly fashion. Texas Chainsaw Massacre delivered on that front, but hopefully the sequel will provide more than just graphic kills.
