By Brent Snyder (2/20/2022)
It seems that everyone - and I mean everyone - online this weekend has chimed in with their opinions and/or reviews of the latest "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" currently streaming on Netflix. The slasher "requel" stars Elsie Fisher as the new "Final Girl" facing off against the notorious chainsaw-wielding serial killer Leatherface. Some fans love it (I count myself in the "love it" camp) while others criticize it for a variety of reasons, including the circumstances that bring the Final Girl and Leatherface together.
Produced by Legendary and directed by Fede Alvarez ("Evil Dead," "Don't Breathe"), the new TCM centers on a group of young entrepreneurs from "the city" who plan to buy up foreclosed property in the "ghost town" of deep rural Harlow, TX. - and turn it into some kind of hip progressive boho tourist destination.
A primary knock against "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is that supposedly the "millennials buy a town" subplot is considered "unrealistic" by some horror fans. Really? A consortium of young entrepreneurs buying up cheap foreclosed property to flip into tourism businesses is unrealistic? It happens every day - in real life.
Granted, it's usually one or a few pieces of foreclosed property at a time and not a whole town at once - and there's not usually a maniac swinging a chainsaw around, scaring the investors - but that's the nature of exploitation fiction: to take a real life situation and push it to the extreme.
Where do you think BnBs and those funky little restaurants, galleries and shops inside old houses come from? Those were originally people's homes. Most people never think about what happened to the families that used to live in them.
Living in Texas, I've seen this happen many times. The gentrification of the Montrose neighborhood in Houston, TX is a tragic tale of loss that still stings to this day. (I know several people from the area who wish there HAD been a Leatherface to slice and dice the "gentrifuckers" to pieces. Metaphorically, anyway.)
Seriously though, one of the reasons why property prices in Texas are so sky high (even in deep rural economically depressed areas) is that entrepreneurs are snatching up foreclosed properties and hoarding them, hoping for a big pay day.
The economic disparities between the urban wealthy and the rural poor of Texas are real, complicated and painful issues facing our State. In my mind, utilizing these issues made "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" more relevant to me than previous entries in the franchise.
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