After a long wait, Netflix’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre is now available to stream. Framed as a sequel to the original film, this movie picks up 50 years after Leatherface went on his initial bloody rampage, and disappeared into hiding. According to the official synopsis, Melody (Sarah Yarkin), her teenage sister Lila (Elsie Fisher), and their friends Dante (Jacob Latimore) and Ruth (Nell Hudson), head to the remote town of Harlow, Texas to start an idealistic new business venture. But their dream soon turns into a waking nightmare when they accidentally disrupt the home of Leatherface, the deranged serial killer whose blood-soaked legacy continues to haunt the area’s residents – including Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré), the sole survivor of his infamous 1973 massacre who’s hell-bent on seeking revenge.
In the past ten years there have been two other attempts at direct sequels to the original movie with the 2022 film marking the third attempt, none of them related to each other. If that feels a bit like what they’ve done with the Halloween and Candyman franchise, that likely isn’t an accident. The latest trend in horror sequels seems to be taking the original title, ditching most of the timeline, and doing a sequel that reads like a reboot on its face.
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so far, the results aren’t quite at Halloween levels. ComicBook’s Spencery Perry called the sequel bland, comparing it to…well, every other attempt to revive the Chainsaw brand.
“While the 1974 Chain Saw was a film that was imbued with subtext and went out of its way to create a mood through subtlety and everything that it didn’t show you, Texas Chainsaw Massacre is as big, dumb, and loud as a party bus parked near Bourbon Street,” Perry wrote. “The marketing has led some to believe that this film will be a send-up of internet influencers, cancel culture, and social media-obsessed Zillennials. It is ultimately none of those things, using those tenets as very basic character traits that amount to window dressing. Texas Chainsaw goes out of its way to point out why no one in their right mind would come out to the middle of nowhere, then fills itself with characters that are given the shallowest possible reasons to do just that.”
Texas Chainsaw Massacre is based on characters created by Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper. Story by Fede Álvarez & Rodo Sayagues. Front and center to the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre is Golden Globe award nominee Elsie Fisher who stars alongside Sarah Yarkin (Happy Death Day 2U), Moe Dunford (The Dig), Alice Krige (Star Trek), Jacob Latimore (The Maze Runner), Nell Hudson (Victoria), Jessica Allain (The Laundromat), Sam Douglas (Snatch), William Hope (Dark Shadows), and Jolyon Coy (War & Peace). Mark Burnham (Wrong Cops) is set to play “Old Man Leatherface” in the new film (original star Gunnar Hansen having died in 2015) while Olwen Fouéré (Mandy) will be playing Sally Hardesty from the original film, actress Marilyn Burns who originated the role having passed away in 2014.
David Blue Garcia directed the film, from a screenplay by Chris Thomas Devlin. Produced by Evil Dead (the remake, obviously) director Fede Alvarez, the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre is streaming now on Netflix.
