Thursday, September 20, 2018

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)

"Somebody kill me, please!",  20 September 2018

After prom, four friends end up lost in the middle of nowhere Texas.  They crash their car and are forced to set off on foot to look for help.  Unfortunately for our heroes, they’re stranded in the wrong place. They’ll spend the night fighting for their lives against a crazed family of killers.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (TCM:TNG) is another of those movies that I really, really want to like (I’ve got something of a man-crush on Matthew McConaughey).  Until last night, I hadn’t seen the movie in at least 10 years. I sat down hoping I was wrong and it would work this time. If anything, TCM:TNG is worse than I remembered.

There are scores of problems I could write about, but the main one is the film’s plot - or more precisely, the lack of a plot.  There’s really not much here that resembles a coherent story. It’s a mish-mash of recycled ideas, attempts at humor, story elements involving a secret governmental-whatever that come out of nowhere, and generally poor filmmaking.  Add it all up and it’s one big disaster. It’s amazing to sit and watch a film with the words Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the title and not find one scary or suspenseful moment. Take McConaughey’s introduction as Vilmer as an example.  The movie sees fit to leave the viewer in suspense about Vilmer’s intentions for no more than 10 seconds before he’s revealed to be a bad guy. Why not let the character be something of a mystery for a while so that when he makes his murderous tendencies known, it’s a surprise?  But no, that might have made for an interesting plot twist and you can’t have anything like that in TCM:TNG.

A well deserved 3/10 from me.  

3/10


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