The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the key pieces of
American cultural history. The 1974 film started a new wave of cinema, combining
elements of documentary, the fear of rural and the quintessential American
invention, the serial killer. Each of these elements combined into an eerie
work of art that set off a chain reaction of imitators, low budget slasher
movies are still being made to this day, yet most of them fall shy of what
makes Chainsaw great. The surprisingly bloodless film creates its own gothic language,
one entirely separated from the European lexicon and submerges the viewer into
a cinematic landscape of death and madness. Prior to Chainsaw, horror films
still dwelt on Dracula, Frankenstein and aesthetics heavily influenced by
Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Chainsaw acted as a new way of
formulating the language of contemporary horror, the first book in a New
Testament that would continue to influence society fifty years later. I rewatch
the film, projected through the windshield of my car and onto a stained sheet I
had hung beneath the boughs of a dead tree. I had decided to also listen to the
audio commentary from the 1996 laser disc release, with Tobe Hooper, Kim Henkel
and Daniel Pearl talking about the making of the great work. This is playing
through a Bluetooth speaker I had on the roof of the car, the audio sometimes
getting drowned out by the sounds from the film, particularly the dinner table
scene. The film still holds up of course. Its a classic, remade multiple times,
yet each iteration falling short of the original vision. As the film nears the
end, with the Leatherface tantrum, I start the film again. What better way to
pay tribute than rewatching it multiple times out in the Texas wilderness?
As the sun began to rise, I turn the projector off and lie
back in the driver's seat of the Hyundai Sonata. Horror films were a cultural
archive of the fears of the society in which they were made. This was well
known of course, taught in cultural studies classes from kindergarten, yet as I
lay inside the car with a red dawn emerging behind distant mountains the shape
and colour of putrid teeth, I reflected on recent horror films, trying to align
them to what I had witnessed so far in my voyage across the States. Folk
horror. I hissed. What had once referred to films like The Wicker Man or
certain Hammer Horror films had been hijacked by A24 horror fans who saw
somebody outside and said 'that's folk horror, that's folk horror!'. The mere
act of leaving the house was deemed as a potentially horrific experience,
dripping in occult geometry and the anxiety of human interaction. Horror films
still reflected the nightmares of the American public, it just happened to be
that the American public was scared of everything. They couldn't even say words
like death or homeless any more. They would fly into apoplectic rages if their
Doordash deliveries weren't delivered within five minutes, proudly posting the
evidence on social media that they were basically babies with poor impulse
control and an utterly narcissistic worldview, screaming at teenagers and migrant
workers that their chicken tenders were late. The contemporary horror fan would
watch either 'folk horror' or overly long creepypasta iceberg videos. Like all
other forms of culture, horror had been defanged, mass produced and made cosy.
As the sun cracked the sky I began to laugh to myself. Maybe the issue wasn't
production companies revisiting old ideas or making forgettable, flaccid films,
the cinematic form of an adult colouring book. Maybe America needed something
new to be scared of.
I'm sitting in a warehouse. Around me are twenty young
people from across Houston. They have been told this is a piece of online
content where they would take it in turns to argue with me about fear. At first
they would run through a series of things they were scared of: climate change,
politicians, white people, having a job, meeting up with friends, being
sextorted by cyber criminals and so on. I calmly explain to each of them that
we needed to find the root of all of these fears. In fact, there was something
that didn't just connect these fears, but connected everyone in this room. At
this revelation they all started looking to one another, whispering that this
was kinda weird. One guy stood up.
"Okay, I'm about to crash out right now. I need to
leave." He says, walking away. I chuckle to myself.
"If you leave now, you'll never find out how your fears
are linked." I say, staying still in my plastic chair. The kid laughs
performatively, walking across the dusty warehouse floor and towards the door.
He tries it. It doesn't open.
"Bro, what the fuck?" He yells. The other
participants begin to shuffle in their seats, a few get up and start
squabbling, go over to the big metal door and pull on it, shouting at me to let
them go. I hold up my hand to silence them.
"Tell me, do any of you believe in goblins?" I
say. There is a pause then people burst out laughing.
"Goblins? What is bro cooking?"
"There's no such thing as goblins." Says a woman.
I raise an eyebrow.
"Are you sure about that?" I say, raising my other
eyebrow. The participants laugh nervously.
"Sure, go ahead, if you have a goblin here, bring it
out."
"Bro thinks he's Saruman." Laughs a jock. I nod,
get up and walk to the back of the warehouse. An audience gathers at the edge
of the shadows, their confidence that goblins didn't exist waning.
"This has gotta be a prank, on god." One whispers
to another. In the shadows they hear my footsteps, some quiet words. My
footsteps start again, approaching them, though they aren't alone. They are
accompanied by the rhythmic patter of bare feet on the concrete floor. We seem
to coagulate from the darkness, finding form into the light. I am walking
towards them and holding my hand is a goblin.
At first, they don't know how to react. Some people laughed,
some people gasped. A woman screamed. I crouch down and whisper something to
the goblin, it let's go of my hand and walks towards the small crowd of people
gathered around.
"No way is that real."
"It must be a kid with makeup on. Or a hologram."
"I can assure you that it's real. Go on. Take a closer
look." I say quietly. The jock shakes his head.
"Ten bucks says this is Peter Dinklage with some green
facepaint on. Hey Pete, I loved you in Game of Thrones." He says, laughing
as he turns round to the other participants. They were silent. Apprehensive.
The jock approached the goblin, kneeling down and looking into its small,
pig-like eyes.
“Hey there buddy.” He said. The goblin looked closely into his
eyes, a growl percolating deep in its throat. The jock laughed, turning to the
other participants again.
“See, it’s not that bad.” He said. That’s when the goblin
leapt onto him.
The goblin began riding the man as if he were a jockey, the
pair of them ran around screaming, scattering the people that also began to
run, forgetting there was no escape. Meanwhile I pulled on my Leatherface mask,
go over to a switch on the wall and flip it. All the lights went out. As a
fresh wave of panic swept the people, I knelt down and pulled the ripcord of
the chainsaw I had hidden behind a pillar. I rev the engine a few times and
turn on a red flashlight I had taped just behind the saw blades. I start
mocking the screams of the people around me, with the goblin laughing somewhere
in the darkness with a mouth filled with blood.
An hour later I pull up outside Houston zoo. In the backseat
is a baby orangutang, the green paint still visible around its eyes and ears as
I take its paw and walk with it back to the entrance. I thank the zookeepers
and make my way back to the Hyundai Sonata. The participants were safe of
course. They had participated in my experiment in fear, each of them
contributing to the thesis of terror I had concocted in the warehouse. As the
Sonata drove in the moonlight, I turn to the rotting head of Walt Disney on the
passenger seat.
“Turns out that people are more scared of goblins than existential
terror. Heh. You knew that already though, didn’t you Walt?” I say. I drive the
car onto the highway, heading North.
“You know, there’s one thing that still puzzles me. If a
person can experience almost limitless horror, what is the evolutionary purpose
of it? Does it make sense that a human can be overcome with fear to the point
of not being able to do anything? That events can haunt them for there entire
lives?” I say. There is no response. I flick on the radio, listening to news
reports charting ongoing disasters intercut with songs by Benson Boone, Morgan
Wallen, I drive past the carcasses of roadkill, the car heads along the highway
in the night and I whistle a lonely tune to myself, hypnotised by road markings
that flash past quicker than the lives of insects.
I ride. I think of The Evil Within, wondering if it serves as a blueprint for the potential horror films of the
future. It was obvious Hollywood was running on dust, it had less ideas than an
AI and didn’t dare publish a horror film that a twelve year old kid couldn’t go
and see. Yet horror was the truest form of cinema, the well-known films of its
genesis were horror, it sang to the nightmares and fears of the movie-going
public at a much deeper psychological level than the Adam Sandler movie, Click.
Although the genre was jerked around, underfunded, never recognised at award
ceremonies, it remained the ultimate expression of the artform. The 2025 film
Sinners, written and directed by Ryan Coogler, as well as the works of Jordan
Peele, gave a glimpse into the near future of cinema. Blaxploitation was back. Amateur
obsessives would create their own horror films filmed on camera phones. People would take large doses of psychedelics and tell each other scary stories. We were
entering a new era of horror, influenced by punk ideology, a lack of money and
buckets and buckets of blood. As the car begins to gather speed, I begin to
scream with joy. The potential horror films of the future were being birthed in
the minds and conversations of everyday Americans right now. Life imitated the
Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And I had the special edition 4k restoration.
