Chain Reactions
Chain Reactions
7.1100%
The Texas Chain Ssw 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.
Kevin Ward reviewedJune 30, 2025
Chain Reactions is an insightful and bloody valentine to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a film I embarrassingly only just watched for the first time—despite being a lifelong slasher fan. Patton Oswalt offers a fan’s perspective, but I never tire of hearing directors talk about their creative influences. Takashi Miike and Karyn Kusama both eloquently describing how TCM shook something loose in them creatively. Miike in particular draws a line from Leatherface’s grotesque theater of violence to his own transgressive work, He also mentions how it made everyone in Japan think Texas was a really dangerous place. Karyn Kusama speaks to how her own work draws influence from a deeper, subtextual reading of Chainsaw—seeing it not just as horror, but as a critique of societal structures. Stephen King and Alexandra Heller-Nicholas round out the lineup of five voices that each reflect a different facet of the film’s legacy.
Chain Reactions tracks the seismic aftershocks of one of horror’s rawest, most enduring texts. Even if you’re late to the massacre like I was, it’s thrilling to see just how many artists are still haunted—and inspired—by it.