Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (Film, 1997) #31DaysOfHorror
content warning: foul language, blood, gore, nudity, abusive relationship/domestic violence, self-harm
A group of teenagers leaving prom get into a car accident, leaving one of them injured and both cars totaled. The group splits up to find help. Unfortunately, they’re in just the right place to run into a family of murderers who hunt and kill people for sport.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation is the last of the original group of Texas Chain Saw films. It’s even original co-writer Kim Henkel’s only directorial credit, seeing him pull double duty as writer and director. This makes The Next Generation feel, at least tonally, a lot more similar to the original.
The biggest problem with The Next Generation is the characters. Half of the teenagers aren’t particularly likeable. Heather and Barry get a lot of the early screentime as a couple fighting on prom night. She’s obsessed with taking his side and believing everything he says. He just wants some action and talks down to any girls he sees the entire film. It’s an irritating dynamic that only gets worse when Leatherface and his family become involved.
The characters that do work are the new family members. Matthew McConaughey gives one of the best performances in the series as Vilmer, a tow truck driver with a bad habit of running down people in the road. Robert Jacks gets to show off the more sympathetic side of Leatherface, clearly struggling between all of his conflicting desires and what the family makes him do. Tonie Perensky’s Darla fills in the gap left by Drayton Sawyer, doing great comedic work as the brains and public face of the Slaughter family. Joe Steven’s W.E. and James Gale as Rothman don’t get as much to work with, but they balance out the dynamics well. The Slaughter family can all hold it together a little longer in public than they could as the Sawyers two decades ago, but they inevitably twist into something inhuman and driven by murder.
One thing Henkel does very well is address some of the events that could’ve played out different in the original. The scares were so quick and brutal in the original that there wasn’t time to see if characters could react differently. Henkel specifically recreates the first house scene with two victims, showing what could’ve happened if the young people tried to fight back instead of falling at the first sign of trouble. The Next Generation find new horror in scares that became iconic decades before.
This is not a bad film. It’s much darker than the other entries in the series. Henkel’s screenplay tackles much more serious issues than the other films without as much levity. The humor is deadpan and mixed in with the toxic behavior of the Slaughter family. What starts as a slasher film turns into a horrific domestic drama breaking down the nature of the medium itself.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation is available to rent or purchase on all digital platforms.
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