Texas Chainsaw Massacre producer Fede Alvarez wanted film to be a bloodbath

You’re probably quite aware that there’s a new Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel coming to the Netflix streaming service this Friday, February 18th… and if you’ve watched the trailer embedded above, you probably know to expect a good amount of bloodshed. Speaking with ComicBook.com, director David Blue Garcia said that the film’s producer Fede Alvarez encouraged him to make the movie as bloody as possible.

Garcia said,

When you work with Fede Alvarez as a producer, he’s made some very, very shocking and gory films (Evil Dead 2013, Don’t Breathe), and he’s a master at that. I remember my first day on set, I had to shoot one of the kills for a minor character, and Fede called me the next day. He had seen the dailies and he was like, ‘Hey man, great job on that kill, but I want you to do it again. I just want you to go a little further, a little more blood, and then once you think you’ve got enough blood, put more.’ That was my direction for the rest of the movie. We were just constantly trying to one-up each other and get the craziest kills, the most creative kills, and just really fire a lot of blood from a squib or whatever. … It was a lot of fun to create that, and also working in the editing room and really enhancing those kills, and forcing the audience to look again, you know what I mean? Just when you think you’re going to cut away from the violence to the reaction, no, we’re cutting back, and we’re going to show you, and you’ve got to keep watching it. That was our goal. It’s like when you watch those old Family Guy episodes, you think the joke is over, but the camera just doesn’t cut, and Peter Griffin is still holding his knee, you know what I mean? We just wanted to go so far that it became uncomfortable. So, that’s what we did.”

Speaking with Polygon, Garcia reiterated that

Fede taught me to get creative with the kills, and use more blood than you think you need to. If you didn’t get it right, reset, even if it takes an hour, then shoot it again, because that’s the stuff that people are coming to see.”

The director did also note, however, that this isn’t all just “violence for violence sake”. He finds the kills to be cathartic, because “as humans, we just want to see something that we fear.”

Scripted by Chris Thomas Devlin (based on a story by producers Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues), this Texas Chainsaw Massacre has the following official synopsis:

After nearly 50 years of hiding, Leatherface returns to terrorize a group of idealistic young friends who accidentally disrupt his carefully shielded world in a remote Texas town.

Melody (Sarah Yarkin), her teenage sister Lila (Elsie Fisher), and their friends Dante (Jacob Latimore) and Ruth (Nell Hudson), head to the remote town of Harlow, Texas to start an idealistic new business venture. But their dream soon turns into a waking nightmare when they accidentally disrupt the home of Leatherface, the deranged serial killer whose blood-soaked legacy continues to haunt the area’s residents — including Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré), the sole survivor of his infamous 1973 massacre who’s hell-bent on seeking revenge.

In addition to the actors mentioned above, the cast includes Moe Dunford, Jessica Allain, Sam Douglas, William Hope, Jolyon Coy, and Alice Krige, with Mark Burnham as genre icon Leatherface. We recently learned that John Larroquette, who narrated the opening text crawl of the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (watch it HERE) and was also heard in the remake and the remake’s prequel, has been brought back to narrate the opening of this movie as well.

To hear a sample of the score composed by Colin Stetson, click HERE.