Chain Reactions (Alexandre O. Philippe, 2024)
What makes this movie an enduring masterpiece, is that it's thesis seems to be, "America is a madness, and I want you to look at it, and experience it." And there's art that works in a more polite setting, but ultimately I think most great art is a punch in our complacent faces. That movie expands my notion of what art even is.
Karyn Kusama in Chain Reactions
Documentaries dedicated to a specific film can be tricky. Docs dedicated to a influential, milestone films that have already been analyzed and picked over by thousands of people, both in print and on screen, are even trickier. Often these are fan service. They can be fun and enjoyable, but at some point, there’s nothing new to wring out of anecdotes about on set experiences, the journey that is the genesis from inception of the idea, to the delivery in theaters, to the impact after release and so on. As someone who watches more documentaries about film than the average person, and horror films especially, this variety of documentary has gotten a bit stale. I'm more likely to put this variety of documentary on while I'm doing something else. Maybe I pick up a new tidbit of trivia, maybe an anecdote from someone involved in the film is funny, maybe there's something in the genesis of the film that I can stick in my back pocket for later use if I run into a snag in my own efforts at storytelling.
The intent behind these fan service docs is an expression of in group recognition and solidarity than anything else. It's what makes them fan service more than anything else. "We all love this film, it has meaning to us too, and isn't it cool we all get to have that together?" I don't begrudge these docs, hence I do still put them on. If you're already part of or aware of the fandom the documentary is targeting, they're entertaining and welcoming, but not revelatory in any real way. They're a little like cotton candy, caramel or saltwater taffy. A sweet, fun pick me up that is a great divergence from other more common forms of narrative, but aren't really sustainable as a diet either. There's nothing wrong with it, and it's great as part of the collage of experience, yet it's not very nourishing.
Occasionally, someone comes up with some new, interesting way to look at a film that’s been analyzed, parsed and worshipped for generations, like Room 237.
Alexandre O. Phiippe’s Chain Reactions is a sly, intelligent documentary, that splits the difference between that warm, welcome expression of fandom and a revelatory exploration, by putting a new intent in a familiar package. By interviewing five erudite people, all of whom have a firm grasp on film as a medium and storytelling more generally, and who have a deep admiration for The Texas Chainsaw Saw Massacre (referred to as TCM from here), what we end up with is as much a study in the way great works of horror speak to us in subjective ways, as it is a study of the film itself.
The audience for Chainsaw Reactions isn’t just people who already love the film, though a love, or at least respect for it, is going to be the main driver for the audience it finds. It can also appeal to those asking an evermore popular question these days, “Why horror?” or “What is it that draws people to horror?” As much as or more than anything else I've ever seen or read, Chain Reactions ends up being an exercise in what the film, and the horror genre by extension, has existed and remained a potent, if maligned, corner of the larger world of storytelling for hundreds of years.
There are five segments in Chain Reactions, each focused on one person talking about their experience with TCM, their perspective on the film, its reception and to different degrees, its impact on horror and culture. It begins with Patton Oswalt. Why would a stand up comedian and actor be among the people given space for this? Oswalt is a cinephile, and a storyteller. Stand up comedy is storytelling, in many ways. He's also a perfect introduction into what the documentary is going to be, because of his level of comfort in front of the camera, his grasp of the subject matter and his warm, engaging manner.
From there, we get segments from Takashi Miike (the most celebrated Japanese horror director of his generation), Alexandra Heller-Nicholas (one of the eminent film scholars who specialize in horror, exploitation and cult film), Stephen King and director Karyn Kusama (a director celebrated among the horror audience, despite not being afforded much status from more mainstream film circles).
By not falling into the trap of making a documentary trying to squeeze as many notable interviews in as possible, Chain Reactions gives all of its interviewees more room, resulting in what feels like an organic revelation of common themes and reactions to TCM, without it becoming a repetition of the same phrases and ideas. The common variety of fan documentaries often fall prey to the feeling of a message board or social media thread about a beloved work, where the interview subjects are repeating the phrases and ideas popular among the fandom, as either a way to signal their in group status. Chain Reactions is painting TCM and by extension, horror itself, in the personal and the possible.
All of the interview subjects have a different experience with the film, and the reasons they find it resonant vary. The things they find revelatory about TCM vary. They find different pieces of the film most impactful, but there are commonalities too. The key to Chain Reactions being a step away from the many other documentaries focusing on single films, is that the interviewees are all interested in how TCM relates to and is situated within film as a medium and storytelling as whole.
One of the things that makes TCM a particularly good subject, and why there have been so many documentaries dedicated to it previously, is that there has always seemed something impenetrable about it. The variation in the response to it, even among those who have a deep abiding love and respect for it, speaks to this. They can often seem at odds. Some are compelled by the sense of terror and madness it inspires in them. Others are touched by the bleak nature of the vein of very dark humor that runs through it. For others, its the aesthetic presentation and/or technical aspects, like set design. For some, it's the way it explores and/or reveals the themes and ideas they see in it, and even there, the themes and ideas that viewers have found in it could make a nearly endless list.
I was about ten years old when I first started encountering written pieces about TCM and different other media dedicated to the horror genre that included it. It wasn't long after that I got to actually see it, though as the Chain Reactions refers to, there were a number of terrible VHS editions. I didn't get to actually watch TCM, until I'd rented it a third time, from a third rental store. The first two copies were so dark, virtually nothing on the screen was recognizable. I was probably twelve or thirteen when I did get my hands on a copy that, as Alexandra Heller-Nicholas describes as her experience, was over exposed and washed in yellow, which only contributed to the sense of realism it carried. The "dinner scene" was among the most upsetting and disturbing things I'd every seen, to that point. I don't know how many times I've seen it since. Probably thirty or forty times in the years immediately after, and at least once or twice a year since. I am firmly in the audience who has been fascinated by this film since the first time I saw it. In the nearly forty years following, I've read or heard many millions of words spilled about it. Not once had I read or seen one person be able to capture all of the what and why of the power TCM contains. It's part of the reason I've continued reading and listening to what people have to say about it, why what they have to say has continued to be printed and recorded. It has taken that full spectrum, those many different perspectives, to be able to get a grasp on why TCM is something very different than so many of the other films with an impulse and intent to disquiet and disturb.
The last segment in Chain Reactions belongs to Karyn Kusama, and in my forty years of fascination with TCM, she is the first to see and be able to express that difference in its fullness and complexity. It's an accomplishment many thousands (including myself) have been failing to achieve during the fifty years since TCM was released. There are a handful of filmmakers, critics, writers and academics who excel at, and have become beloved for, their ability to talk about film. Martin Scorsese is one of the most recognized. Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert's work as critics have shaped modern film criticism because of their ability to do so, as different as their perspectives were. Of late, cinephiles on social media have come to find Ethan Hawke interesting and inspiring in the way he talks about film, storytelling and art. If there were only one reason to suggest watching Chain Reactions, it is Karyn Kusama's segment, the expansiveness of her ability to express what a film can be, and what a film can do. The marriage of her technical understanding of filmmaking, with her ability to express the possibilities of the medium specifically and art more broadly, put her among the most incisive and thoughtful people we have communicating about film today. It doubles as being the most insightful commentaries on TCM I've ever come across, and as insightful an explanation of the important purposes horror serves as a genre.
Kusama's insight into TCM has a strong relationship to it as an American film. What Chain Reactions brings to the table that few other docs achieve, is that by including both, it puts this insight in relationship with Takashi Miike, and his experience and insight as a Japanese filmmaker who saw the film in Osaka as a teenager. They are different experiences. They create different insights. The two filmmakers have two different relationships to the film. The depth and power of the impact is similar though.
Ultimately, Chain Reactions success is its demonstration of an intent and structure for a documentary about a piece of mass media that expands what documentaries of this kind can do and how to do it. It could be maddening to attempt to assemble interview footage in a way that produces something coherent, if the intent is something more than a love letter to the fandom of that piece of media that is the subject of the documentary. This difficulty is likely why we don't often get documentaries in the vein of Chain Reactions. Alexandre O. Philippe and editor David Lawrence have succeeded in meeting this difficulty, which is no small achievement. Hopefully, their success leads others to adopt this intent and explore others.