Chain Reactions
Hello everyone and welcome to my blog. For those who know me you know about my love for horror films so once a month, I’m going to review and discuss a scary flick. We’ll look at the classics, and some new films, and I want your suggestions on what I should review. I’ll do my best to cover all the different genres within the genre – slashers, ghosts, monsters, etc.
SPOILER ALERT! – These will be reviews so if you haven’t seen the movie you’ll want to watch it first before you read this. Let’s do this.
CHAIN REACTIONS
What makes a film truly timeless? Why does The Texas Chain Saw Massacre continue to haunt and inspire 50 years after its release? Director Alexandre O. Philippe – who brought us 78/52 and Memory: The Origins of Alien – takes on these questions in Chain Reactions, a documentary that's less about dissecting TCM and more about understanding its cultural impact through the eyes of five very different artists.
Comedian Patton Oswalt kicks things off discussing how he watched it for the first time on an ancient VCR. Japanese horror maestro Takashi Miike reveals he went to see Chaplin's City Lights when he was 15 but ended up watching Chain Saw instead – and he now wonders if he'd even be a filmmaker without that twist of fate. Australian film critic and historian Alexandra Heller-Nicholas talks about her fascination with the movie in a country where video nasties weren't readily available. Stephen King puts Hooper's work in context with his own and discusses his association with the director. Finally, filmmaker Karen Kusama (Girl Fight, Jennifer's Body) rounds out the perspectives with her take on what the film means to her.
These aren't necessarily the world's most famous people, but that's kind of the point. Philippe doesn't need A-list celebrities to prove TCM's importance. What he captures instead is something more valuable – genuine, personal responses to a film that has burrowed its way into the collective consciousness of horror. Each person brings their own lens, their own experience, their own understanding of what makes this movie work. And what's fascinating is how much they all agree on the core elements that make it powerful.
The big thing that comes through – and this is something I believe more and more as time goes on – is that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has only grown in appreciation. We just celebrated 50 years of this film (and if you haven't listened to my podcast episode with cinematographer Daniel Pearl, who shot both the original and the remake, you absolutely should). It's that funny thing in life where people and events and art get more appreciated as time passes. You know, like nobody likes a president when they're in office and then 25 years later everyone's saying what a great president they were.
What Philippe understands is that certain things about this movie are universal, no matter who you are. That visceral, unsettling feeling. The question of whether what you're watching is real or staged. Is this a snuff film? Is this found footage? The name itself draws you in with a promise of something terrible, and the film delivers in ways that feel raw and immediate. Everyone in this documentary touches on those same elements – the relevance to its time, coming out of the Vietnam era when violence was being broadcast into homes. The economic anxiety of people being put out of work but still trying to survive, even if that means running a slaughterhouse with humans instead of animals. It's a beautiful film in the most disturbing way possible. And it's still frightening.
Chain Reactions premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival in August 2024 and got a limited theatrical release through Dark Sky Films in September 2025. It's currently earning a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes with critics praising it for being a thoughtful, unpretentious meditation on the cultural and artistic impact of one of cinema's most influential works. That's exactly what it is. This isn't some flashy, overproduced documentary trying to manufacture importance. It's people talking about why this movie matters to them, and in doing so, reminding us why it matters period.
If you love The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – and I mean really love it like I do– you need to watch this. It's a way to understand not just the film itself, but the impact it has had and continues to have on people who make art, who watch art, who think about what horror can do. Philippe made a great decision to create this, to let these voices speak, and to show us that even after five decades, this chainsaw is still running smoothly.
Enjoy the trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j5SPOgAY7c