The latest installment in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise is still tentatively penciled in to hit theaters before the end of 2021, but it hasn’t been given a locked in release date as of yet. The ninth entry overall has clearly been close to completion for a while, with test screenings being held in early May.
The reports weren’t good, with one scathing review in particular blasting the latest reinvention of the property as a blatant ripoff of the formula that David Gordon Green utilized to such great effect with 2018’s Halloween. However, producer and all-round horror veteran Fede Alvarez is in firm disagreement with the single unsatisfied customer.
The filmmaker knows a thing or two about rebooting a classic horror property having helmed The Evil Dead remake, while he’s turned high concept thriller Don’t Breathe into a marketable franchise. In a new interview, Alvarez addressed the criticism, and he doesn’t hold back when it comes to basically telling the detractor that they’re dead wrong.
“I would let the studio announce the planned release, but we played it a couple times. There was someone online who said it didn’t go well; I don’t know what screening he was at, it was amazing. When you test it, you get a score, and it scored as good as Don’t Breathe 2, which I think is better than Don’t Breathe 1. So that tells you something.
It started just as Evil Dead started; us thinking, what can we do with this character and this franchise. A lot of respect for the legacy of the first movie, but we’re aware there’s a new audience out there who might not love it or doesn’t know anything about it, so we need to make sure they can enjoy it as well. That’s how the story was crafted.”
Of course, taste and personal preference is entirely subjective, but Texas Chainsaw Massacre has endured a troubled production. David Blue Garcia directs from a script by Chris Thomas Devlin, but that’s after initial choices Ryan and Andy Tohill were dropped from the project, leading to a complete restart with all of their footage scrapped.
There’s really no need for Texas Chainsaw Massacre to even exist, but Alvarez has promised practical effects and all sorts of depravity, so the gorehounds should at least be satisfied with the finished product, even if we’re still waiting to find out when exactly the direct sequel to Tobe Hooper’s classic 1974 original is coming to the big screen.
