We’ve got a new Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie available to watch on Netflix. In many ways, the new film embraces the pillars of the franchise, like the atmosphere, tone, and sheer brutality of Leatherface’s attacks. But then there are also some new thematic additions, and those storylines have already sparked quite a bit of conversation.
The 2022 movie puts the spotlight on a group of friends who head off to Harlow, Texas with a business plan. They’re going to transform the rundown down into a haven for young adults looking to leave city life behind. Trouble is, when they arrive, they immediately act like they own the place, angering the locals — including Leatherface.
Sarah Yarkin’s Melody is one of the masterminds behind that business endeavor, and she’s reluctantly recruited her little sister Lila (Elsie Fisher) to join them for the trip to Harlow. Lila’s past plays a significant role in shaping her current headspace and influencing the decisions she makes throughout the film because it’s revealed that Lila is the survivor of a school shooting.
During my interview with Texas Chainsaw Massacre producer Fede Álvarez, I asked him what inspired the team to incorporate this storyline and why they went about doing it this particular way. He began:
“The way we see it and the way we work with the themes, it’s just based in this; I’m Uruguayan, right? So I’m not from here. I was not born in the States. I came to the States for the first time when I was an adult and I moved to the States just recently, maybe right after Evil Dead, 2013, something like that. So there’s a few themes that are constantly in the news and they just slap you in the face as soon as you move here because they’re things you never discuss in your country, right?"
Álvarez emphasized the importance of considering an international audience when developing the film:
“You’re kind of trying to explain to them. It’s almost like if you’re going to another planet and you’re trying to explain what happens in America and you’re gonna go, ‘Well, there’s this obsession with guns and there’s this gun violence and they have all these issues with this and this and that and that and that,’ and you just talk about the things that normally [are] not — they’re very American issues that at least I didn’t deal with where I’m from.”
The key to conveying all of those issues to a worldwide audience via a Texas Chainsaw film for Álvarez and the team? Leatherface.
“It’s like we’re trying to put all those themes in the movie and trying to have Leatherface represent the hate that comes out of that. For me, he represents that hate that comes from fear, not the hate that’s intellectual. If you watch the original movie, he’s just like a kid that’s scared that sees these people walk into his house and suddenly are terrified, and he’s terrified of them and he doesn’t understand why they’re wearing the clothes they’re wearing and where they came from, and just starts killing them, and definitely out of some sort of fear and hate combined. So I think it’s that Leatherface is like the product of the tensions that come out of all the themes in the movie. That was the way we see it.”
Álvarez also emphasized their drive to earn the word “massacre” in the title Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and explained how this gun violence storyline tied into that goal:
“I think you do a movie that’s called Texas Chainsaw Massacre in this day and age, it wasn’t going to be called a massacre by just killing five people. And the shooting, in a way, at the beginning kind of shows that, the fact that we live in times when massacres do happen and that’s why I think, even in the movie, he needed to up the ante to earn the word massacre in the title, and not being just five people and just take it to a level of what happened in the bus scene, right?”
One thing you might be wondering after watching this new Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie is, what exactly is this film saying about its themes? Turns out, that lack of clarity is what the filmmakers were going for. Álvarez explained:
“Our instinct with Rodo [Sayagues], because it’s such an American title, to bring all the themes into it and try to confuse the f*ck out of you with them. Try to really not make them clear and black and white. That’s within Don’t Breathe. It was also talking about America, and Detroit representing a part of America. And really trying not to make it so clear that, ‘Well, these are the bad guys, these are the good guys. There’s this theme, there’s two sides of it. These people are wrong, these people are right,’ because that’s not how the world works for us. The world is a f*cking mess and [there’s] shades of gray and there can be all sorts of characters in both sides of the story, so that’s the way we approached it. We wanted you to walk out of it and go, ‘Wait, but I still don’t have an answer! Who was right and wrong?’ Because that is the way that life works. I know that some movies do give you an answer and they take a strong point of view. For us, in something like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it’s the most gruesome horror movie, you’ve gotta be chaotic and it cannot be preachy. It’s not school time.”
Looking for more from Álvarez on the new Texas Chainsaw movie? You can catch our full conversation in the video at the top of this article.