Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, sweepstakes, and more!
This Horror Sequel Released 12 Years After a Slasher Classic Is One of the Most Bonkers Movies Ever
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is everything you heard the first movie was, and more.
Nothing can prepare you for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
After five decades, Tobe Hooper's classic film about a group of youths who run across a family of cannibals is still one of those experiences that just has to be seen to be believed, a masterclass in tension and pure, wild-eyed terror that'll flat-out make you uncomfortable even as it's entertaining you. It's earned every bit of its reputation, and it seems impossible to top even in an age of constant franchise-building.
Which is why The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 didn't even try.
Released 12 years after the original film and once again directed by Hooper, the 1986 sequel to Texas Chain Saw (now streaming on Peacock) is wildly (emphasis on the wild) different film that still latches on to its predecessor's unhinged energy. For some viewers, it might seem disjointed and even jarring, but the closer you look, the more you realize that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is one of the best horror sequels ever made, not because of what it does the same, but because of where it departs.
Why The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is a great horror sequel
It's important to think about the passage of time when it comes to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. More than a decade passed between the films, long enough for the original Texas Chain Saw to develop its own kind of urban legend infamy –– people claiming they'd possibly eaten people meat from that gas station, people claiming they knew about "the real Leatherface," and so on –– and place in the horror canon. By the mid-1980s, Texas Chain Saw was one of those films you just had to find a way to watch as a horror fan, and the people who hadn't seen it had already decided it was one of the most depraved, gruesome, frightening films ever.
That added a certain gravity to the eventual release of the sequel, which follows a radio DJ (Caroline Williams) who runs into Leatherface and his family as well as a vengeance-seeking former Texas Ranger Lieutenant 'Lefty' Enright (Dennis Hopper) trying to track the family down. There's a sense that the Texas landscape is haunted by the Sawyer family and their exploits, and it certainly helps that Enright is trying to track them down specifically because they killed his niece and nephew in the previous film. There's a weight to it that makes you lean in, which Hooper then exploits to the fullest possible extent when the action begins.
And when the action does begin, you're reminded of the other consequence of the passage of 12 years between movies: It's the '80s now. The film's opening sequence, in which the Sawyers kill two motorists while an Oingo Boingo song plays is one of the wildest and most unhinged kills in the history of slasher cinema, is a pure dose of 1980s madness in everything from the costumes to the music to the production design. It's all dialed up to 11, and that vibe continues as the film goes on. Whether you're watching Leatherface wreck a radio station with his chainsaw or you're visiting the abandoned theme park where the Sawyers now make their home, there's a sense of fully embracing the new decade with vibrant colors, wild action, and of course, the kind of gore effects that had become commonplace in the genre throughout the early 1980s.
The passage of time, coupled with Hooper's more frenzied 1980s directing style and the sheer force of 1980s pop culture, means that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is a film that retains the sense of impending madness from the first film, but pushes everything else beyond the gritty realism of the original and into new territory altogether. If The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a living nightmare about the harsh realities of sweat and sun and impending death, then The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is a fever dream, a bad trip, a barely contained maelstrom of blood and screams and unexpected laughs. The two films do successfully connect, but the sequel is great precisely because it's willing to be what the first film is not.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is now streaming on Peacock alongside the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre, as well as hundreds of other Halloween season horror titles.
