Movie Review: 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)' is Utter Trash and We Deserve Better

“Do something and you are totally canceled bro!” Random Leatherface victim in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022.

Allow me to set the scene: A bus filled with Zoomers partying late into a rainy Texas night. Leatherface, the famed chainsaw killer boards the bus wearing his adopted mother’s face and carrying his chainsaw. Slack-jawed soon to be dead, Zoomers point cellphone cameras at Leatherface and victim number 1 threatens the lunatic killer with cancel culture. A generation that has lived through multiple school shootings is here portrayed as so dimwitted and P.C that they believe cancel culture would stop a chainsaw wielding maniac.

This is what passes as social satire in the new Netflix take on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise. This bankrupt, intellectually deficient hot take is supposed to continue the legacy of one of the most subversive and politically charged horror movies of all time? This boneheaded meme is what passes for modern satirical discourse? It’s a wonder that no one asked if Leatherface identified as an attack helicopter. To say that satire is not the strong suit of the makers of the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a grave understatement of the stupidity and bankruptcy of this cash grab sequel.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022 stars Marcus Lattimore as Dante and Sarah Yarkin as his business partner, Melody. Together, Dante and Melody have purchased the town of Harlow, Texas, a town abandoned decades ago but with its main street still intact and buildings ready for renovation into new business. Dante and Melody believe they can turn the town into a progressive utopia filled with diverse and sustainable businesses run by fellow Gen-Z dreamers.

Naturally, they are about as welcome in Texas as saddle-sores and horse thieves, or some such other Texas stereotype. Dante and Melody, with Dante’s wife Ruth (Nell Hudson) and Melody’s sister Lila (Elsie Fisher), in tow, have a group of investors on their way to Harlow to auction off the town. Of course, they meet cops along the way who tell them how unwelcome they are and have a brief run-in with another redneck stereotype, played by Moe Dunford, in a big nasty, black smoke spewing, monster truck, to complete the stereotype bingo the film is apparently playing.

The modest backstory we get is only for Lila, the ostensible final girl, because stereotypes, tropes and clichés are an irresistible buffet for these no talent filmmakers. Lila is a survivor of a school shooting who suffers from PTSD via editing flashbacks. If you can’t guess that her arc is to go from being afraid of guns to wielding the biggest gun you can find, you are trying about as hard as the people who made this movie. The movie even has her caressing a big black automatic weapon to underline the point in the first act before she drops it in fear.

Then there is Leatherface, played by Mark Burnham. Via exposition radio broadcast we learn that Leatherface evaded capture and went into hiding somewhere in Texas. Meanwhile, exposition gas station owner updates us on the original final girl, Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fourere). Apropos of very little, exposition gas station owner tells Melody that Hardesty has spent the past 50 years searching for Leatherface and plotting her revenge.

For those who haven’t seen the modern revision of the Halloween franchise, the makers of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022 have very lazily ripped off the backstory of that film’s final girl, Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. In the modern Halloween canon, Laurie is a hermit, living in a rural home where she’s spent decades training to kill Michael Myers with various forms of firearms. In Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022, Sally Hardesty has done exactly the same thing. The only difference is that one is played by a well known and beloved movie star.

I’ve written an extensive and thorough defense of the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as one of the most subversive, political and incredible movies of the last 50 years. You can read that here. Thus, I won’t spend much time rehashing why the original is a masterpiece. Meanwhile this supposed sequel is utter dreck, a pointless, deeply derivative, and uninspired rehash. The title may be Texas Chainsaw Massacre but the movie is merely an assemblage of the same old tropes, stereotypes and gore we’ve seen in dozens of other movies that have attempted to capitalize on the easy money available in the horror genre.

Horror fans, I know we all love this genre but when do we stop watching? When do we begin to demand more from our blood and guts legends? When do we demand that filmmakers stop doing the same things over and over and over and over again? If not now, when do we demand that Leatherface, Jason, and Freddy be left in the past so that new ideas and new legends of the genre can be created?

I say we start now and the first step is not watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022.