The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a horror classic. As a horror classic, it has spawned numerous sequels and even a few remakes since its release in the 1970s. While not every movie that followed was a failure, tragedy, or travesty, the franchise has gone through some rocky interpretations, nonetheless. There were a variety of reasons why the first movie was special enough to start a franchise and it was extremely shocking for its time. All the other films seemed to want to reach that same level of shock, but couldn’t do it as well as the original without resorting to excessive gore and the same trappings of every other slasher movie that came out since. Which brings us to the most recent movie, courtesy of Netflix.

Pros

• Special effects and makeup are good

• Less than two hours

Cons

• Characters are either dumb or infuriating

• Leatherface has been given the same treatment as other horror remake villains: he is a hulking behemoth for no reason

• It’s a sequel to the original, yet nothing is disclosed as to why Leatherface is where he is

• Excessive gore and slaughter sequences that remind me of better, fun slasher films where it makes more sense

• Drawn-out ending with some really stupid moments

• Boring

Plot & Thoughts

Despite having the same name, the filmmakers pulled the ol’ bait n’ switch like they used with The Thing from 2011: it’s not really a remake, just another movie in the same universe and we were too uninspired to come up with a subtitle or number. Oh, wait! They took the “the” out of the title, so that means it’s not a remake. It’s an entirely different movie! I lack the eloquence necessary to properly describe how hard I am rolling my eyes at the ludicrous absurdity of that nonsense.

Anyway, let’s quickly sum up the plot. A couple of young entrepreneurs/influencers named Melody (Sarah Yarkin) and Dante (Jacob Latimore) have secured themselves the property rights to a little ghost town in rural Texas with the hope of fixing it up with the help of some investors. They want to make it into a gentrified little hotspot of culture for the hip young kids of today, I guess. While stopping at the harbinger gas station on their way there, the younger sister of Melody, Lila (Elsie Fisher), gets the rundown on the whole Texas Chainsaw Massacre events of the ‘70s from the clerk. Shortly after Lila gets her fill of the harbinger of death’s story, her arrogant, moronic, elitist, piece-of-garbage sister decides to passive-aggressively insult a gas station customer for having the audacity to carry a gun on his hip in Texas, for no good reason. Of course, this guy with whom she makes a winning first impression returns later as one of the only people who can help them in their ghost town venture because this movie is predictable and lame.

When the group of dipsh*ts gets to their ghost town, it’s not entirely empty. An orphanage is still inhabited by an old woman (Alice Krige) and her adopted son, who is about ten-feet tall and resembles a bovine. When the idiots decide to not be diplomatic about the fact that they expect her not to be there, the old lady collapses and is rushed to the hospital by the sheriff. Her goliath son accompanies her and witnesses her die en route. Of course, he gets upset, puts on a face of human skin, and begins his killing spree before heading back to town.

I wouldn’t normally go that far into the plot with a film that really doesn’t have one, but I wanted to bring up a couple of issues, in particular, I have with this movie. The fact that Leatherface was somehow adopted by this old woman is never really disclosed and makes no reference to his psycho family from previous films. It alludes to being a direct sequel by the inclusion of the character of Sally Hardesty, who was supposed to be the one who escapes in the original film. Even if we are to assume that this movie is only a sequel to the original, nothing is detailed about how Leatherface ended up here, why he would care about this woman who adopted him, or how he transformed from a normal-sized person into a 400lb linebacker. But perhaps I’m getting hung up on irrelevant nonsense.

Regardless of how it does or doesn’t tie into the franchise, this movie sucks. Big surprise, right? If you couldn’t pick up on the cliché predictability of the film in the first ten minutes, you were going to figure out eventually how everything would likely go down. It’s a slasher movie, so it’s bound to be predictable, but I don’t know why we have to make all the characters so unlikeable, especially the ones we’re supposed to root for. What’s more infuriating to me is that I watched the original just before I saw this and it only highlighted the shameful disgrace that this film is. Rather than discussing what else happens in this piece of crap, I’d rather just close with why it doesn’t deserve to have the name it does.

The original film was scary and effective because of its low-budget, grimy realism. It’s not like the acting was incredible or anything. It was just that the whole premise of the film was that you could be on the road with your friends, take a wrong turn, and end up getting killed by a family of psychopaths. Leatherface in that film wasn’t a hulking behemoth. He was just a psycho who wore a mask made of human skin and killed people with a chainsaw and hammer. The original takes its time getting to the point where the first murder happens, slowly building tension through quiet scenes and creative camera angles. When the people do start dying, it's usually quick and doesn’t focus on the gore because it didn’t have to. I know that modern horror feels the need to make everything a gorefest, which I don’t always mind. However, I do with this.

The main point I want to make about why I hate this film is that it just shouldn’t be a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie. If this were a sequel or remake of Friday the 13th, I’d be far less offended. That whole franchise is built around the gory effects and bad characters you want to see die. When Jason Vorhees first appeared as an adult, he was a huge guy. So having the killer be massive and showing all the gore would have been appropriate for the film. It still wouldn’t be a good movie with all the other flaws that it has like the bad characters, paper-thin plot, and annoyingly drawn-out ending. By taking the approach they did, the filmmakers ensured that this movie does nothing to stand out from other slasher horrors. It reminds me of that bad remake of House of Wax with Paris Hilton. It took a more unique film franchise and made it into a generic slasher for a quick dollar. Between the two, I think I hate this movie more just because they’ve already done this before (multiple times) and clearly have not learned a thing.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

Texas Chainsaw Massacre of 2022 is a pathetic entry in the franchise by being a boring, cliché movie that almost actively tries to make itself as generic as possible. It is an insult to the original film which was far more creative, scary, and unique. If you are looking for a generic slasher movie to watch, I don’t even recommend wasting your time on this. Watch a Friday the 13th sequel or one of the remakes of Black Christmas.