Editorials
“This is Appalling”: ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation’ as a Commentary on the State of Horror Circa 1993
There’s a certain perception that the horror genre declined in the very late 80’s and very early 90’s. Whether you agree or not is irrelevant, the perception is there, and can arguably be attributed to the oversaturation of the genre by the endless sequelization of its highest-profile franchises. By the early 90’s Freddy had swung from the stuff of nightmares into full-blown comedy, Jason had been to Manhattan, and Michael Myers had veered into psychic chicanery. These were slashers that went from some of the most frightening material the genre had ever seen to cartoonish caricatures of themselves. And there’s no better example of this leap from profound art to laughable trash than the Texas Chainsaw series, which went from the heart-stopping original film to—well, to whatever Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation was.
Something has never quite lined up with these two movies, which were written by the same man, Kim Henkel, though to watch them you’d never guess. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a seminal classic, while The Next Generation is almost universally derived. So what happened? Let it be submitted that Henkel – a film professor – deliberately wrote and directed an inferior sequel in order to say something about the perceived state of the horror.
For starters, the film begins with what would be considered a very traditional cast of Teenager Murder Victims-to-Be, headlined by Renee Zellweger as Jenny, AKA The Final Girl. Aside from Jenny, these characters were born to be murdered in the woods, and we’re made especially aware of it by the fact that one of them never shuts up about it. From the moment they end up on the side of a Texas back road, Heather forecasts their imminent demises because she’s obviously seen one of these movies before and she knows what’s up. This is the first of Henkel’s wink-wink-nod-nods to the audience letting them know that he’s in on the joke.
But the real journey into the back-pocket of self-parody begins with the new family themselves. The original family name of ‘Sawyer’ wasn’t on-the-nose enough, so now they’re the ‘Slaughter’ family. That’s right; in this movie, the iconic chainsaw-wielding maniac is straight-up named Leatherface Slaughter. And while much ado has been made (rightfully so) about Matthew McConaughey’s over-the-top turn as Vilmer, what is less-often discussed is the desperation pervading it. Vilmer is what the kids call a ‘try-hard,’ someone so eager to please his master (who we’ll get into in due time) he gives the game away at every turn. Where Cook and Hitchhiker toyed with their prey before veering into off-putting lunacy, Vilmer has no time for such subterfuge. When he encounters Sean, he immediately kills a man in front of him and then runs him down in a truck. He gives Jenny barely a moment after picking her up before he launches into a deranged rant and shows her the grisly cargo in the back of his pickup. Gone is any nuance or the slow burn of the original, replaced with the instant escalation more-often seen in cheaper slasher fare.
Then there’s Darla, Vilmer’s girlfriend, a participant in the night’s proceedings out of sheer obligation. She’s not exactly into what’s taking place around her, at one point recreating one of Chain Saw’s most unnerving scenes in the most half-assed way imaginable, awkwardly poking at Heather with a stick once or twice with all the force of a gentle breeze. Which leads into the way the movie haphazardly recreates many of the original movie’s aspects in ways that seem intentionally inferior.
Leatherface, once efficient, methodical and near-silent, now struggles to competently capture or kill his victims, all the while screaming like a petulant child.
The family, no longer backwater cannibals, dines on pizza instead of the fresh meat of their victims.
The dinner sequence, originally one of the most effective and horrifying scenes ever committed to film, goes so far off the rails it climaxes with Jenny turning the tables on her captors and scolding Leatherface into sitting down and shutting up.
The ineffectiveness of it all of this is intentional, and we know this because a man in a limo pulls up and openly acknowledges it.
Mr. Rothman, ostensibly part of the Illuminati and the mastermind behind the massacre, is undoubtedly the most controversial and debated aspect of Next Generation, which is understandable. This new element flies in the face of everything the series has ever stood for. So why is it there?
Twenty years before The Cabin in the Woods presented us with a shadow organization that created Horror for the sake of an ever-watchful audience, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation did the same. And like in Cabin, this particular event has gone completely sideways and the big boss is forced to intervene. Mr. Rothman, the literal producer pulling the strings, shows up to scold the antagonists.
“This is appalling,” he says, echoing what we’ve all been thinking for the past hour and ten minutes. “I want these people to know the meaning of horror. Horror.” The script could have put a number of words in his mouth there. Terror. Dread. ‘Horror’ was a specific choice, a pointed observation that what we’ve witnessed so far is a subpar attempt at recreating one of the genre’s best works. And while his admonition spurs the movie into one last attempt at a go-for-broke climax that includes an homage to Chainsaw 2’s Leatherface-on-a-truck sequence and an out-of-nowhere airplane, it’s still a piss-poor attempt at creating anything worthy of Hooper’s legacy. As Leatherface swings his chainsaw around in another flimsy callback to a better movie, Rothman sighs, declares the whole thing an abomination and apologizes to the audience by way of Jenny.
It’s this final sequence that best reads as a summation of Henkel’s view of the then-current state of the horror genre, or more specifically the slasher subgenre, or more specifically still, the Chainsaw series. Mr. Rothman’s grumblings sum it up well; All this effort to recreate a spiritual experience, only for it to end in disappointment and ennui.
So if Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation let you down, it’s possible that was the entire point, and would, therefore, make it more effective – and more cynical – a work than it’s ever been given credit for.
Mr. Rothman would be proud.
Of the three films that make up the Diabolical Trinity of classic religious horror films—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and The Omen (1976)—The Omen is the most purely entertaining.
While Rosemary’s Baby digs into the societal shifts of the 60s and The Exorcist explores spiritual tensions between faith and doubt in an ever-shifting world, The Omen seems most interested in just telling a thrilling story. It achieves this by blending two major trends of the 1970s, the devil movie and the paranoid thriller, into one crackling adventure yarn. In the process, The Omen has sparked fear and curiosity about what could happen in the “end times” if such events are to occur.
After seeing The Exorcist, producer Harvey Bernhard contacted writer David Seltzer and said something along the lines of, “Hey, write me one of those.” Seltzer, having never read the Bible, thought it would be an interesting challenge, so, according to various interviews, he read the Bible and several commentaries in search of a story. Then he stumbled upon a passage in the book of Revelation, the image of a great Beast rising out of the sea, that sparked his imagination. In the commentaries, he found that the sea represented politics in some interpretations of the text, and he began building his story on that foundation.
Seltzer has told this story often, and I am inclined to believe him. However, from there, much of the theological-sounding lore of The Omen was created purely by Seltzer. Many of the ideas surrounding The Antichrist in the film appear to be drawn much more from the pop-eschatology sensation of the 1970s, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay, than any Biblical source.
Lindsay’s book was the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s and re-popularized views of the “last days” that had been dying along with fundamentalism for decades, namely Dispensationalism, Millennialism, and the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. In dispensationalism, history is broken into several epochs of time (or dispensations) that culminate in the return of Christ and his thousand-year (millennial) reign.
Before this return, a seven-year Tribulation will occur in which the Antichrist comes to power and persecutes all who oppose him, culminating in a battle between the forces of good and evil at the valley of Megiddo, usually called Armageddon. Of course, in this worldview, the true believers in Jesus will be lifted out, or raptured, before all this takes place. Since the publication and popularity of The Late Great Planet Earth, this has been the prominent belief in Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christian circles, though Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestant denominations largely reject it.
Lindsay also did something unique that had not been the case even in dispensationalist circles before him—he posited that the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 started the countdown to Armageddon. Fans of the film will immediately realize where Seltzer ran with this idea in the first line of the poem created for the movie: “When the Jews return to Zion…”
Damien Thorn and the Creation of Horror’s “Innocent Villain”
Seltzer’s next inspiration focused on the idea of the Antichrist as a child, what he would call the film’s “innocent villain.” In watching The Omen, it is readily apparent that Damien Thorn (Harvey Stephens) does not really do anything evil beyond a bit of normal kid mischief. Even the moment in which Damien knocks Kathy Thorn (Lee Remick) over a second-floor railing can be read as an accident orchestrated by Damien’s diabolically connected nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw). The film takes this idea of the innocent villain a step further by casting Gregory Peck, best known for playing arguably the greatest father in film history, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as Damien’s earthly father, an element that greatly satisfied Seltzer.
The New Testament itself says very little about the Antichrist and certainly nothing about his childhood. In fact, the word antichrist is used twice (1 John 2:18 and 2 John 7 for the curious) and refers to groups of people, not a particular person. There is also a passage in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 in which the writer (usually attributed to Paul) discusses “The Man of Lawlessness” who will “exalt himself over everything that is called God” and “proclaim himself to be God.”
Then there is the Beast of Revelation chapter 13 with “seven heads and ten horns” that Seltzer latched onto, which has been interpreted in a multitude of ways over the centuries. Powerful people throughout history, from Charlemagne, various Popes during the Protestant Reformation era, Napoleon and Hitler, to modern politicians, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, have all had the label placed on them by various circles. Even religious leaders like Billy Graham have not escaped being called the Antichrist.
Lindsay and modern dispensationalists are certain the Antichrist will be a 21st-century individual as they are equally certain that the Rapture, Tribulation, and return of Christ are imminent, likely within their lifetime. Many scholars and theologians, however, interpret these passages as symbolic representations of the Roman Empire and the first-century Caesars who persecuted, tortured, and murdered Christians and Jews who refused to submit to Imperial rule and worship them as gods. For example, that the Beast from the sea in Revelation has seven heads is symbolic of the famous seven mountains of Rome, with the 10 horns referring to rulers and magistrates of the Empire.
But this is all really of no matter to Seltzer and the story of The Omen. Instead of being concerned with any historical or theological accuracy, he instead built his own lore, which sends Robert Thorn and photographer Keith Jennings (David Warner) on a globetrotting investigation into the nature of the Antichrist and how to stop him. Some of this lore includes the child being born of a jackal, the reaction of animals, the protective cult that arises around Damien, the daggers of Megiddo, and maybe most interesting of all, the peculiar flaws in Jennings’s photographs that presage the ways certain individuals will die.
All these aspects are where the paranoid thrillers come in, as films like Blow Up (1966), Z (1969), The Conversation (1974), The Parallax View (1974), 3 Days of the Condor (1975), and All the President’s Men (1976) were all the rage at the time. Especially in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the idea of journalists (like Jennings) as ordinary heroes who could bring down the powerful, nefarious forces in the world was exactly what audiences craved. And what greater hidden evil force was there than the Devil? This is also why the device of the daggers of Megiddo is so important to a movie like this. If Damien is indeed the Antichrist, there must be a way to stop him, though in the Biblical text, the only power capable of destroying the Devil is God Himself.
The Mark of the Beast, 666, and the Film’s Most Famous Religious Symbolism
The piece of lore created for the movie with the most solid Biblical grounding is the Mark of the Beast. Revelation describes a mark on the forehead or hand of those who worship the Beast and his image. Again, this is symbolic language differentiating those who belong to the power of the Roman Empire and those who belong to Christ, who have the Mark of the Lamb. In Seltzer’s hands, the mark is very literal, a birthmark that is borne by not only the Antichrist but all his followers, meaning they are marked from before birth as belonging to Satan, and there is no escaping it. This is all rather distressing to the priest Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), who betrays his mark by warning Thorn about Damien and pays the price by memorably being impaled by a spire that falls from a church steeple after being struck by lightning.
Why is the mark three sixes? Again, this is drawn from a passage in Revelation that states that the Beast can be identified by calculating his number. In Biblical scholarship, this is believed to be the sum of the name of a man transferred into Hebrew numerology, a practice in which each Hebrew letter also represents a number. Using this method, the number of the name Caesar Nero, which many believe to be the most logical choice, is six hundred sixty-six. In the film and elsewhere, this number is changed to three individual sixes. According to the film, this represents the Diabolical Trinity (a designation also unique to the film) made up of Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet. That Damien carries this unique birthmark under his hair convinces Robert that the child is the Antichrist, and it’s up to him to destroy him.
Part of what makes The Omen great is its ambiguity. Damien could be the Antichrist, or he could be at the center of a series of coincidences. Director Richard Donner stated in interviews that he believed Robert Thorn had gone insane by the end of the film, which, to Donner, is the only explanation for why Thorn would attempt to kill an innocent child. However, that enigmatic smile in the final shot suggests that Damien does embody a spirit of great evil. The sequels, however, all but erase this ambiguity.
In audiences, The Omen sparked a renewed interest in the concept of the Antichrist and the dispensationalist interpretation of the end times that continues to echo throughout the last five decades. Around the time of the film’s release, even Elvis Presley was photographed brandishing a paperback copy of Seltzer’s novelization. Dispensationalist authors like Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, and John Hagee have made millions publishing books and giving lectures about the Antichrist and the end of the world.
The Legacy of The Omen, 50 Years Later
Though A Thief in the Night (1972) preceded The Omen in initial release, it gained quite a resurgence (along with the ability to create three sequels) in the wake of the popularity of The Omen and went on to scar the psyches of Evangelical children for decades. Hal Lindsay was also able to release a film version of The Late Great Planet Earth in 1978, complete with narration and a brief onscreen appearance from Orson Welles.
In the 1990s, the Left Behind series became a cultural phenomenon, spawning twelve books in the core series, a YA spinoff series, video games, and a movie series (2000-2005) starring Kirk Cameron. A bigger studio adaptation of the first book was released in 2014, starring Nicolas Cage. 20th Century Fox and The Omen got in on the renewed “end-of-the-world” vigor by releasing a remake of the original film on June 6, 2006. The franchise was revived once again in 2024 with The First Omen, which explores ideas of the Antichrist and the motivations of those in power in our current religious, social, and political context.
But despite all the sequels, spinoffs, rip-offs, remakes, and “end times” money grabs of the last 50 years, the original version of The Omen remains untouchable. Its greatest strength is that it seeks, first and foremost, to entertain. And it does so admirably.
After half a century, its influence can be felt in horror, the culture at large, and even in various faith circles. It is a testament to the power of story and film that, consciously or unconsciously, fans of The Omen and those who have never seen it alike are, to this very day, marked by the Beast.
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