The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation

(1994) **

This one starts on Prom Night (!) Heather the prom queen finds Barry the prom king kissing another girl and tears off in his car, relenting at the last second and letting him in. Turns out Renee Zellweger is in the back seat with her date, and two minutes away from their high school they're in the uncharted woods getting into a car accident. It's ridiculous, of course, but I have to admit I was relieved. I needed a break from all those desert road trips gone wrong, and it's been a while since I saw a victim pool in prom gear.

There's a funny balance here between liking the characters and yelling at them for making the obviously wrong move. At one point a pickup truck drives by and doesn't stop, so Heather and Barry go running after it into the enveloping dark. While they're walking along the script hits this funny peak when Heather admits her whole dumb act is an act and really she's just a bitch who wants her life a certain way. It's as if the writer had one good, genuine character moment he'd typed once and he decided to drop it in there. Soon though, in a pattern pretty similar to the original, Barry is bonked on the head and Heather is hung on a hook.

The word for this movie is "confused." If you doubt me, take a look at the dvd title screen here.


I know you're thinking what I'm thinking, "is Leatherface hitting on me?"

Viewing this movie will award an occasional few minutes of interest, but not nearly enough to fully recommend it. And the bad stuff is fairly unbearable. I wrote in my review of the original that I was picky when it came to depicting bullies, and on that note Matthew McConaughey delivers one of the most loathsome performances I've seen yet. His constant stream of tedious abuse and crazy talk drags the movie way, waaaay down, inversely propelled by how good a job McConaughey obviously thinks he's doing. Leatherface is reduced to a B-level character in the (once again) newly configured family, so that Matt can chew up all the scenery.

There's a sharp lack of ideas here. Once the dinner scene with Renee starts up, she gets away, gets caught, gets away again, gets caught again. They also never seem to get tired of someone new to the scene turning out to be In On It. The nice Kirsty Alley analog who works at the motel...she's in on it! The non-hillbilly guy who just arrived in the limo (don't ask), he's in on it too! My advice: whenever anyone in a Texas Chainsaw movie tells you to calm down because it's going to be alright, remove that person's eyeballs with your thumbs immediately.

The final chase takes us outside the following morning, where a pair of elderly good samaritans pick up Renee in their RV, only to be set upon by Leatherface and a big truck.


They used this same gag in the opening murder of TC 2, the "omigod there's a guy with a chainsaw out my car window, what can I possibly do?" I don't get this. The answer is "hit the brakes." You might say they're scared and not thinking straight, but I say piffle. Slamming on the brakes is an instinctual move when crazy shit's going down on the road. It's the instinctual move. The burden on the other guy to keep an even pace with you is much more difficult.

But did anyone consult me? Of course not, and this happens.


This movie has very little to offer, but it's not quite nothing.