'Chainsaws Were Singing' (2024) Movie Review

When you hear about a DIY Estonian horror-musical that took the filmmaker (Sander Maran served as director, writer, editor, cinematographer, songwriter, and probably more roles) a decade to make, you can’t help but be curious. And Chainsaws Were Singing is all of that and so, so much more. This is a bizarre, wild time that goes way, way out in the wilderness and is something fans of movies like Cannibals: The Musical and Hundreds of Beavers need to check out.

 

Brokenhearted and on the verge of suicide Tom (co-writer Karl Ilves) meets the foul-mouthed Maria (Laura Niils). She’s having a bad day, her parents and dog just died, she got beat up, and then robbed. But in like a funny way. They fall instantly and hopelessly in love. Things are looking up for both our young lovers. That is until a fuckface with a chainsaw, Killer (Martin Ruus), shows up and kidnaps Maria. Now Tom must track this mute, except for when singing, murderer and save the love of his life, all with his new BFF sidekick Jaan (Jano Puusepp) in tow and a song in their hearts. And then things get strange.

 

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Initially Chainsaws Were Singing plays like a wacky Texas Chainsaw Massacre with musical interludes, but the tone is all over the place. There’s blood and guts, hillbilly cannibals, inept cops, incestual lover twins who steal babies and dream of a simple suburban life, a lesbian hedgehog doing her best Monty Python rabbit impersonation, parked cars that keep exploding for no reason, seriously unsafe stunts (at one point Ilves dangles out a car window blasting down the highway, and I can’t imagine there were stunt performers or much of a safety team), and much more. What begins as a light, goofy romp, even with all the aforementioned wildness, takes a sharp turn into grim, bleak territory when it digs into Killer’s backstory and horrific relationship with his abusive, domineering mother that explains why he’s such a sad, lonely murder-boy. It’s like, oh, I thought this was supposed to be fun, now we’re in some deep dish childhood trauma. But then it zips back to slapstick banter and pratfalls. You might get whiplash if you’re not prepared. 

 

You can definitely tell this was filmed in chunks and pieces and fits and starts. Not only do different segments vary drastically in tone, hairstyles change from scene to scene, and the aesthetics fluctuate based on what they had at their disposal. For example, the scenes at Killer’s remote family abode, largely set in a dank, dark basement, watch like a lost gritty ‘70s grindhouse picture and are legitimately harrowing and grimy.

 

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For the most part, things glide along at a rapid clip, rarely slowing down for you to notice any unevenness or gaps, though there are moments when the tempo drops. More than anything, it’s overlong and overstuffed, like Maran chose bits over pace or narrative cohesion. It’s understandable in a passion project like this to fall in love with a sequence and want to keep everything. However, there are entire asides, threads like the “Great Bukkake Tribe,” that don’t land, upend the momentum, and should have been excised. An hour and 58 minutes of this is a lot to ask of an audience.

 

Still, for all the unevenness, for all the bumps and tears and stitched-together-with-dental-floss scenes, Chainsaws Were Singing is something to behold. Utterly absurd, this is silly, goofy, and sophomoric, energetic as hell and rowdy as all get out. Maran’s enthusiasm is palpable and the result is boisterous, unhinged mania in movie form.

 

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