Texas Chainsaw Massacre | 2022 | R | – 1.10.7

Why is “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” rated R? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “strong bloody horror violence and gore, and language.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes many scenes of brutal murders by a man using a chainsaw and an axe with a lot of blood and gore shown, several scenes of a man cutting the faces off murder victims and wearing them as masks, flashbacks to previous similar murders, flashbacks to a high school shooting leaving many teens dead, several arguments, and nearly 30 F-words and other strong language. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.

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A serial murderer (Mark Burnham), presumed dead since 1973, resurfaces 50 years later to continue his gruesome mayhem in a brand new campaign of carnage. Also with Alice Krige, Sarah Yarkin, Elsie Fisher, Moe Dunford, Nell Hudson, Jessica Allain, Olwen Fouéré, Jacob Latimore, William Hope, Jolyon Coy and Sam Douglas. Directed by David Blue Garcia. [Running Time: 1:21]

Texas Chainsaw Massacre SEX/NUDITY 1

 – A woman wears a low-cut clingy top that reveals some cleavage, with denim short-shorts that end at the upper thighs.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre VIOLENCE/GORE 10

 – A man riding in a sheriff’s van grabs a deputy’s wrist and breaks the forearm (blood and gore gush out as the sharp ends of the bones appear), a woman in the van screams, the deputy fires a handgun and misses, and the man uses the broken arm bones to stab the deputy in the neck twice (blood spurts all over the van and the woman’s face); the van veers off the road and hits a combine (the driver is slumped over the wheel), the man hits the driver in the head with a log (he falls out of the frame and dies). A man holds a dead woman, cuts off her face (we hear the cuts and see gore), raises the skin to the sunlight and places it over his own face as a woman in a van tries to radio for help; he breaks the glass, stabs her in the throat (we see blood flow and hear her gasp), and in close-up in the stomach (we see more blood flow) and she dies with her eyes open.
► At night as we hear the loud grinding of a chainsaw, the bloody severed head of a man rolls into a party bus door and a man wearing a skin mask and carrying a chainsaw gets on the bus, which is full of people: people photograph him as he revs up the saw and begins cutting them up as everyone screams and several people fall out of frame; we see a bloody severed leg, a bloody arm stump, a man is stabbed through the stomach and out the back with the running blade (blood spurts), another man is killed through the back and out the stomach, another is cut diagonally from the shoulder to the opposite hip (blood gushes all over the bus roof, walls, windows, floors, and seats), and a woman leans out a window and the masked man cuts her in half (her bloody, gory top falls out of the window and the bottom falls below the frame); a woman sticks a corkscrew into the killer’s arm (we see no blood) and he is wearing an apron that is covered in his victims’ blood as he chases two women, but they escape, screaming.
► A man wearing a skin mask enters an abandoned building, pulls a man into the hall, and we hear struggling noises and gasps; when the door opens, the victim stumbles backward with blood on one shoulder, falls to the floor (blood gushes out) and later gets up and stumbles outside, and we see that his face has been cut through the mouth and throat to one ear; dripping blood, the victim gurgles and dies as a man and a woman look on in horror.
► A woman in an abandoned building hides in a closet as a man wearing a skin mask enters the room, grabs a dress from the closet, smells it, and puts makeup on his face mask; he then uses a sledgehammer to punch a hole in a wall, a man with a handgun enters the room, the masked man attacks him with the sledgehammer and an axe, the gunman punches the masked man, they fall against a window that shatters, and the masked man slashes the gunman in a shoulder and across the throat; he bleeds and dies as the woman’s face is splattered with blood and the masked man uses an axe head to pummel the dead man’s head, squishing out more gore and blood, as the woman climbs over a railing, the masked man slices through the floor several times with the saw and chases her; the blade cuts a large pipe and massive amounts of feces flow out onto her head and arms and a teen girl screams outside, removes the grate, pulls the woman out and they escape.
► A retired Texas Ranger enters a field of weeds and finds the body of a woman sitting on a log, with her face removed (the skull is visible among gore and blood that have dripped to cover her dress), and she locks a woman and a teen girl in her van before entering an abandoned orphanage: she holds a masked man at gunpoint, but he attacks the woman and the teen girl in the van, as the girl says, “Death followed me here” and the Ranger shoots him, tells the woman in the van to drive away and the masked man throws a chainsaw into the van’s windshield, ambushes the Ranger, cuts her across the throat and in the stomach, she stabs him in the side, and he tosses her into a pile of trash bags; the van hits the masked man, we see the driver with a sharp length of glass or metal impaled through her thigh, the teen girl grabs a rifle, shoots at him, the Ranger shoots him, he runs, and the teen girl follows the masked man into an abandoned building where both fall into water in a hole in the floor, he turns on his chainsaw, she shoots him and another woman enters, jumps on his back, grabs the chainsaw, and slashes his throat and chin (he is covered in blood and falls backward into the water, which turns red, presumably dead). A woman and a teen girl in a parked car put it on autopilot as a man wearing a skin mask breaks out a window and pulls the woman out; he uses a chainsaw to cut off her head (blood and gore drip), the teen girl stands up and looks horrified as the man dances in the street while holding the severed head.
► A man calls a sheriff to remove an elderly woman, who is squatting in an abandoned orphanage that he bought; when the sheriff and his deputy arrive they pull the woman out forcefully and she chokes, gasps and the sheriff carries her to his van and places her inside, where she gasps, chokes several times and dies. A teen girl tells a man that she is a survivor of a high school shooting, and is afraid of guns; we see two flashbacks of a dozen teens lying dead in a darkened school hallway with blood on their faces as one girl gets up; in real time, we see that she has a partially healed scar above her collar bone.
► Many scenes in the film are in darkened hallways and rooms and abandoned buildings, often accompanied by rain, thunder, ominous music, and lots of screaming by men and women. We see bloody knives, hammers, meat hooks, chainsaw blades, and a dirty skull; also pencil drawings of a man wearing a mask made of sewn together pieces that we hear are human skin. The end credits include images of bloody meat hooks, axes, hammers, wrenches, and a bloody running chainsaw blade. A woman cuts flesh from a skinned hog hanging by its hind feet from the rafters of a darkened barn (we see blood on the pig’s body, the woman’s hands and her knife). A man spits to a place out of the frame and we hear the spitting but see no saliva.
► Two men argue about a Confederate flag hanging in front of a building; one man tries to run the other man’s van off the road with a large pickup truck that belches smoke, but fails. A man and a woman argue. A woman argues with a man and another woman, and the couple has her removed from her home. We hear that a murderer who uses a chainsaw in his crimes is still alive and killing again; we hear that he cuts the faces off his victims and makes them into masks, which he wears.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre LANGUAGE 7

 – About 27 F-words and its derivatives, 8 scatological terms, 1 anatomical term, 3 mild obscenities, name-calling (psycho, weird, insane, freak show, coal roller, cult), exclamations (oh my…, hey, woo), 17 religious exclamations (e.g. oh my God, Christ, Holy [scatological term deleted]). | profanity glossary |

Texas Chainsaw Massacre SUBSTANCE USE

 – Two party-bus scenes feature two dozen men and women pouring clear liquor into glasses and drinking from them and one man drinks from the bottle. A man smokes a cigarette in a workshop, and a teen girl has an unlit cigarette in her mouth until a woman tells her to get rid of it.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – Legends, ghost towns, murderers, mayhem, high school massacres, graphic violence, proliferation of guns in Texas, bloodshed, mental illness, evil, danger, fear, suffering, death, survival, lack of cooperation, grudges, interracial marriage, starting businesses in unwelcoming communities, displaying the Confederate flag.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre MESSAGE

 – Some horror movie series will just not die.