Written and directed by Alexandre O. Philippe, explores The Texas Chain Saw Massacre‘s impact on 5 artists – Patton Oswalt, Takashi Miike, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Stephen King, Karyn Kusama – through interviews, outtakes, exploring how it shaped their art, psyche from childhood trauma.
Creating a documentary about such a beloved piece of cinema history comes with an inherent double-edged sword. It’s made for the fans, to celebrate the legacy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre which they will love but also, anyone with a decent amount of knowledge on the film won’t find anything particularly new to discover. In that sense, it doesn’t pack much of a punch.
Chain Reactions pays strong homage to Texas Chainsaw and is a wonderful example of how each individual experiences film in a different way. It portrays exactly how we get out of films what we put into them, with each viewing shaped by your own life. So, if you’re a fan of any of the familiar faces featured in the documentary, you get a nice view into their perspective.
However, it’s not really enough to sustain a documentary that comes in at longer than the runtime of the film it’s exploring. There’s also very little style and editing to be found, choosing to give each talking head their own chapter rather than attempting to blend them together to give it a variety and movement. It ends up with a lot of extended monologues of very niche points of view, which isn’t as enjoyable.
Particularly as it takes some intriguing turns, with a surprising amount of sympathy for the cannibalistic family featured in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It’s a strange viewpoint to explore and yet seems to span across multiple talking heads. It’s a somewhat uncomfortable position to take, of all the interesting facets of the film, that’s not high on the list. There’s also what feels like an unintended irony in having Stephen King talking about his love of Texas Chainsaw, while cutting it with visuals from The Shining, a film he famously dislikes, it’s not a good example of his work to pair with his tome.
Chain Reactions is a very nice homage to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and a wonderful example of how no one viewing experience is the same because it’s entirely influenced by the viewer’s perspective. However, it doesn’t have a great deal to offer, it’s an overly simple conversational style, it doesn’t attempt to add any flair and at times, can feel like it’s dragging itself out. If you’re a fan of the film and of those featured, you’ll have a decent time with this but otherwise, it likely won’t do much for you.
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