By: Paul Farrell

Love is an odyssey, fraught with all manner of earthly obstacles — including chainsaws.

Sander Maran’s Chainsaws Were Singing is a wildly chaotic musical gorefest, harvesting energy from both the gloriously gooey work of a young Peter Jackson and the emotive sensibilities of the Broadway stage. A charming amalgam of a later Texas Chain Saw Massacre sequel and Cannibal! The Musical (1993), the film spends its runtime reveling in the harmonic dissonance created by the many competing tones that flit across the ever-swirling, blood-soaked frame.

The story concerns Maria and Tom, played with aplomb by Laura Niils and Karl-Joosep Ilves. Maria is fleeing a chainsaw-wielding maniac. Tom is about to kill himself. Neither are having a particularly productive day. Then, they lock eyes. Their hearts’ songs connect and distill, pouring from their lips for the world to hear. Then, well, enter once again the chainsaw-wielding maniac.

Martin Ruus plays the killer (who is also treated to his own melancholic soliloquy) with just the right amount of unhinged lunacy and pensive thoughtfulness. It is he and his deranged cannibal family’s warped reality that immediately defines the film, crafting a violently grotesque and exploitative tale interwoven with saccharine melodies that serve (or at least attempt) to build empathetic connections with both the people being chainsawed and the ones holding the gas-powered hydraulics.

The film was crafted over the course of ten years, and the time and effort bleed through in every anarchic moment. The camera juts and jabs in odd directions, taking viewers to uncomfortable positions of closeness and heaping them with viscera as the tools onscreen set to work carving their unlucky targets. Simultaneously, an adorable love story unfolds, taking the film’s protagonists on an unforgettable journey traversing life, love, and, indeed, death in this aggressively gruesome and deeply silly outing into the intoxicating fringes of the horror and musical genres.

Chainsaws Were Singing both wears its influences with pride and is wholly and uniquely original. A rare accomplishment and a fun one too, if you have the stomach for it. Love is an odyssey, after all, and, in this case, an incredibly grotesque one — albeit with catchy songs.