WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Texas Chainsaw Massacre, now streaming on Netflix.
In The Walking Dead, Negan delivered a major statement when he followed through from the comics, taking a bat to Glenn's head. He smashed the hero's skull with the barb-wired bat, beating it to mush in a very graphic scene. Seeing Glenn's eye popping out, hearing the squelches and watching Maggie and Co. squealing as her beloved died wasn't easy at all, and Negan doing the same to Abraham made the moment even worse.
The brutal act cemented him as one of TV's most disgusting villains. Interestingly enough, Netflix's Texas Chainsaw Massacre got its own Negan moment when Leatherface returned to action. Unfortunately, despite all the gory sequences in the movie, this one was wasted and came off pretty tame.
The moment occurred when Leatherface went back to Virginia's orphanage, wearing her face as a skin mask after her heart attack. He put makeup on it and hugged her dress, clearly missing the woman he considered his mom. However, this sentimental sojourn would be interrupted when the townie, Richter, came upstairs after finding Dante's body.
A brutal fight ensued, which led to Leatherface jamming Richter's neck into a shard in the window, dropping the garage worker to the ground. Richter bled out, with Melody hiding under the bed, making eye contact but trying to keep quiet. Leatherface then grabbed his mallet and started bashing Richter's head in, but the movie only really showed the first two clean blows.
After those initial strikes, the camera focused mostly on Melody's face, showing the fear and panic in her eyes as she tried not to scream. The problem is, the audience didn't need to see her because the atmosphere of dread was already present. That mood was created as soon as Richter hit the floor, so it would have been more impactful to see the death from her perspective, witnessing the head getting crushed with repeated blows. Instead, cutting away ruined the moment wholeheartedly, because by not giving this cruelty more air time, it took away from the fright inflicted.
Sure, a one-shot scene seeing his head beaten to a pulp would have been tough to practically pull off and may have required CGI, but it would have resonated and surpassed Negan's kills. More so, it would have shown the franchise was moving past the old films, setting itself apart as well from other modern retellings such as Halloween, which had some nasty murders.
Lightening this death was a weird creative decision given Leatherface is found gutting people, sawing them in half and decapitating them. This one, though, would have been more primal, creating a gruesome finish against his most formidable opponent. Ultimately, it would have reminded fans how powerful, unforgiving and horrific Leatherface can be when someone invades a most personal, endearing space.
To see Leatherface waste his Negan moment, watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Netflix now.
Source: Trendz OH
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