Anyone else watch this stinker? What I thought would be fun and forgettable turned out to be horrid and plain old DUMB. Like duuuuuuuuumb. Like shockingly bad. And not even remotely in a good way. Like waking up and realizing you had a dream about Leatherface that made no sense at all. Because you ate some greasy rich food the night before.
And worse: you craved, and I mean CRAVED, the main stars dying horrible deaths. And that doesn't mean I was rooting for Leatherface either. Because I wasn't. He was equally as annoying as the young actors were. And then there was Sally Hardesty. Who turned out to be just more to hate.
Everything was wrong. Literally everything. Well, maybe not the score (that was pretty cool).
There was a part, and I'm not spoiling anything, where the aged Leatherface smashes his chainsaw out from behind a wall, where it was hidden for like fifty years, and it starts right up. Now, as a man who owns a lawnmower and dreads that first pull of the cord every spring due to it choking and stalling out, I found this idea to be lunacy. But that right there is nitpicking, and you don't need to nitpick this film to realize it was dreadful.
The kills and gore were just "odd" too. The "mask" was bizarre and magically stayed on his face (if you watched it, you'll know what I mean).
I've been reading reviews and comments and I'm not seeing the hate I was expecting. Horror fans are cutting this thing some major slack. I hate to bring it up again, but I'm thinking of my blog post about the recent, and wonderful, Candyman film, and all the seething toxic hatred that film garnered. The notion that ANY horror fan is giving Netflix's Texas Chainsaw Massacre ANY kind of break but piled on Candyman is proof of SOMETHING. I'm just trying to figure out what that something is.
Here's to the original!
13 comments:
Well, crap. Thank god for Flanagan.
Right?
Netflix has a weird rating review. Their top ten is way off in my opinion. I’m always disappointed when watching the trailers. I think the reviews are from teens and and flakey college kids ( no offense to my kids)
Spoilers in my comment, if anyone has care for that.
Been seeing lots of "what fun!" type reviews, and I guess to each their own. But I wasn't a fan either. The people were buying a town? Which had an old lady in an old orphanage, a young guy running a car shop and ... police? But was otherwise run-down and 'abandonded'? And much like his hidden (why?) chainsaw, Leatherface just lived their relatively normally? And went bananas 50 years later?? And the build up of this being a return of Sally, she just wings him, misses another time and then takes the saw through her chest (!) but lives long enough to wing him again, impart wisdom, sort of, then die, in a pile of trash. And don't forget the vague allusions to school shootings, racism and gentrification that are never followed through. And to top ALL of this, there is a post-credit scene where the 70-ish Leatherface has survived all that happens, including multiple gunshots, and is seen walking towards a farmhouse. Is it his old home? Would anyone he knew still be alive? How is he alive??
Sorry for the rant, but I needed a safe place to rant.
We're on the exact same page here.
As someone who worked on a film that didn't get a lot of love (MR JONES), I'm sensitive to people slinging cruel insults and unfair critiques, though sometimes a film EARNS it. Not sure if there was any behind-the-production stuff going on, but I can't imagine how this wasn't just some super fast rush-job to get something out there with a recognizable name. Like if you're going to bring back Sally's character, and then leave her as dopey as those people on the bus, then what's the point other than tantalizing us with her name in the trailer? Oh, and how they forced her character to do the maniacal laughter once again...only to go nowhere with it. And I too noticed her end in a bed of TRASH. It's like they were flipping off fans of the original. I never made it to the post-credits scene and only learned of it from my friend Sara. I wasn't going to be hanging around a second longer than I had to!
Just so much missed opportunity. Again. Seems to be a trend with the modern horror cash-grabs.
That said, I'm hoping Laurie Strode dies in a bed of trash in HALLOWEEN KILLS.
No! Don't want Laurie dead like Sally! I do think Laurie will die, Curtis' final swan song from the role, but I hope it happens in a more respectful way than Sally did. Or Laurie did previously in Halloween: Resurrection.
I also have a hard time ripping on films. I always think about all the work people put in to it. But with this one, I wasn't feeling that. Felt more, as you said, rushed.
haha...I'm just angry at Halloween 2018 and Halloween Kills... I meant to say Halloween Ends in my last blog comment above!
Though i'm sure it WILL be the same as Halloween Kills... HORRIBLE.
I liked Halloween 2018 a lot. Was disappointed with KILLS. Hoping for better from ENDS. Always hopeful.
It was....really bad. The TCM franchise probably suffers more than any other from inconsistent sequels...even Halloween has fewer continuities! Still, many of those flicks are somewhat entertaining...even if it's in the "so-bad-it's-incredibly-entertaining" kind of way, but this entry? It was just plain awful, almost going out of its way to NOT be entertaining. EVERY character was unlikable, especially the so-called heroes. Sally Hardesty seemed to have been tacked on in reshoots to make it more like Halloween 2018, but she is essentially a throwaway character. She doesn't add to the story, doesn't advance the plot, and doesn't contribute to the overall film in any meaningful way. You could edit out every scene she is in, and it wouldn't change the overall film in any way. I know it's a slasher trope for the potential victims to make really dumb decisions, but this flick had characters engaging in actions that made me think the gene pool is being greatly improved by the actions of Leatherface (the bus driver just decides to pull over and get off the bus...why? Did he just decide that life wasn't worth living? Baffling).
Many have defended the film by saying that it's just a big, dumb slasher, and that criticizing it is pointless. Well, I love me a big, dumb slasher, but this one wasn't FUN in any way...and I'm kinda baffled that word keeps being used to defend this steaming pile. This whole defense doesn't work, because this movie went OUT OF ITS WAY to try to elevate the material by including subtext about PTSD, government overreach, debate about gun rights, etc. You don't include those kind of topics when you're trying to make a "fun" horror flick...you put those in when you're wanting to make something a bit more thought provoking. Unfortunately, as you noted, these concepts are brought up, but then never explored fully. In most cases, they are mentioned and then dropped, with little regard given to any kind of real exploration.
Probably the most baffling aspect of this film is the idea of Leatherface as some sort of malevolent, unstoppable killing machine. In the original, he was a simpleton, largely manipulated by the psychotic family that raised him. He was the blunt instrument they employed, but he was hardly the brains of the outfit. Hardesty fixating on him, and not on the family as a whole, is a tad bit of a head-scratcher. She was terrorized by ALL of the Sawyer family, not just Bubba, so why does she only view him as the source of her trauma? For that matter, what the hell happened to the Sawyer family? It was mentioned that Bubba disappeared after the events of the first film, but what about the Cook, the Hitchhiker, or even freaking grandpa? Were they the ones who dropped Leatherface at the orphanage? Were they killed, and he just wandered off to be taken in by Alice Krige? None of this is ever touched upon, and Bubba is elevated to the status of a super-strong, lone boogeyman, which he really isn't supposed to be.
As for the new Candyman, I'm 99% convinced that most of the folks trashing it never even saw it. I've seen too many comments about it being a "remake', which just shows they didn't actually watch the film. Those that actually did see it must have been disappointed that it didn't engage in tons of jump scares.
Fantastic comment and observations.
And to be totally honest, I hadn't even THOUGHT of the significance of them not even MENTIONING the rest of the Sawyer family who were FAR more dangerous and significant to Sally's short captivity. So that was a fantastic point.
I still can't get over the mask. If that was supposed to be that old woman's face, what the hell happened to it in the short time it was removed from her head and placed upon his face? I would be SO offended if I were that actress and was told "oh, that ugly deformed quasimodo mask is YOUR face!...it's just a little stretched."
Well, at this point I may be redundant, but my son and I hated it.
We attended a test screening of this stinker maybe a year ago. Everything about it was just awful. Bad characters, bad setup, bad script...They did not go into this project to make a great or even good Chainsaw movie. They went into it with an agenda to push and to make a quick buck.
I know what is seen in test screenings is not exactly the final product, but it sounds like what you and I saw were nearly identical. Everything about it was stupid and insulting.
For the record, I liked the new Candyman. Maybe not as much as the original, but still.
I also liked Mr. Jones, but I know I went into it only to see the scarecrows/totems, so I was really biased. I bought it before ever seeing it.
That's interesting you got to see this stinker so long ago.
Did they ask what you thought?
Though they probably didn't care.
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