![]() He said, "I got the call, three days later I was on a plane to Bulgaria, a week later I was filming." A week into filming, they were out, and Garcia was in. The film was already in production, being directed by UK filmmaking siblings Andy and Ryan Tohill, who had turned heads on the festival circuit around the same time as Tejano with their rural horror, The Dig. This movie needed a little of that, instead of the Hollywood slickness." Resilience and flexibility were also required. When producers Legendary reached out to him, he said, "they respected the gritty, indie filmmaking craft that I showed. So it was a pretty big transition for me – and a lot of fun." "I had 200 people on set on my first day, and my previous movie had a crew of eight. So there was definite culture shock when he arrived on the set of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Netflix's new addition to the horror franchise. ![]() The Austin filmmaker's first feature, 2018's Tejano, was a $60,000 border thriller "where I was directing, cinematographer, camera operator, and parking cars," he recalled. That’s the mentality.Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Photo by Yana Blajeva / © 2021 Legendary, Courtesy of Netflix)ĭavid Blue Garcia knows the trenches of indie filmmaking. Slap a number or a subtitle after a fan-favorite series - never mind if the story is ridiculous, the kills uninspired, the execution insultingly sloppy and slapdash - if we build it, they will come. even if it meant perpetually resurrecting them or sending them to space. Even before the franchise über alles era of moviemaking we currently live in, horror has always been highly susceptible to being sequelized and spun out to death, picking every chunk of meat off the bones of Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers, et al. But if we can try to treat this monstrosity as something close to a teachable moment, it may not be a total loss. I was reluctant to even write anything about director David Blue Garcia’s take on the tale of a man and his Black & Decker best friend, as merely mentioning that there is a new Texas Chainsaw Massacre out there in the world might draw some curious viewers or completists to it, and we would not wish that on anyone. Stop draining the canon for every ounce of Caro syrup that it’s worth. (You’ll spot “homages” to The Shining, Halloween ’78 and a few other staples of a youth spent in video stores and conventions.) Stop exploiting fandom, nostalgia and brand recognition for your lazy, piss-poor attempts to make a name for yourself on the backs of your genre ancestors. Stop thinking that by referencing other classic horror movies in addition to the legacy you’re already pilfering somehow makes you clever. (And even Green’s revitalized series couldn’t sustain its momentum.) Stop bringing back old stars for easy in-jokes and cameos for every ingenious revisiting of longtime final girls and famous gore-cinema lunatics a la David Gordon Green’s 2018 Halloween, there are dozens upon dozens of examples where trotting out the recognizable faces of yesteryear registers as empty fan-service gestures. Stop slapping “a new beginning” or “the next generation” after the title - every era of teenagers may deserve to get their own encounters with hall-of-fame screen killers, but simply using fresh blood as a fresh coat of paint on a vintage title without adding anything to the proceedings is unimaginative. Stop giving them endless, belated sequels, or prequels, or “requels.” Stop ginning up weak origin stories for the boogeymen at the center of them. Her heart may not be able to take the strain, and should anything happen to her, it might upset the conspicuously hulking presence she keeps referring to as her “last boy.” It’s not that you should always make sure you have your facts straight when you’re kicking an old lady out of the orphanage she’s run for decades, as she may have never actually signed over the property. It’s not that you should hold off offending the redneck you meet in a gas station even if you think his big ol’ pickup truck is a form of overcompensation, as he may end up being an ally to you later on. It’s not that hipsters should ixnay gentrifying ghost towns in the dustier corners of the Lone Star state, even if one of them is a celebrity chef and their idea of revitalizing a long-abandoned main street with a hoity-toity bistro will attract tourists. There’s a very important message embedded in this brand new, fresh-off-the-chopping-block version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and it’s one that should be carved crudely in stone with whatever sharp instrument you have on hand, mechanized or otherwise.
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