Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022: This New Horror Trend Is Ripping Off Fans

Fans paid for a forgettable formula rehash. They just didn’t know it until it was too late. Maybe it was a good thing this film never reached the expensive theatres.

I wonder what the pitch meeting was like for this movie.

Producer: “The Halloween reboot made money. We want to copy the formula.”

Netflix: “Cachingggg!

I have to credit this movie for its attractive cinematography and unique casting. The actors don’t look like Hollywood stars, which is good and makes the film more believable. One of the most frightening things about the first movie was how realistic it seemed. Being shot on a 16mm film (in 1974) with people who looked genuinely terrified, the film was gritty horror that hadn’t been before. For that, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is more than just a popular movie; it is Hall of Fame worthy.

The problem of any movie that tries to recreate its original success is boredom. We’ve seen every new Hollywood moneymaker rehashed a million times. Hollywood always tries to cash in on a safe bet. The Texas chainsaw massacre was a big movie because it gave us a look into something only our imaginations could conjure up. In 1974, our world wasn’t as horrible as it was yet to become. People paid attention when a horribly murderous family was put into our collective pop-culture consciousness. Especially when marketing said it was “based on a true story.” Yikes.

But now it’s just a common trope. But revisiting the world of the original tickles everyone’s curiosity. It always will. That’s money in the bank. But it is at the expense of the fans who pay for a fair experience.

The 2022 Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s new “direct sequel” immediately pays homage to the original with similar sound effects, narration, and editing styles. The film successfully creates a curious start. The setting is intriguing. A red herring is provided. We have some excellent ingredients. The picture slowly becomes painted for fans of the first film throughout the first 15 minutes.

Spoiler: the small town showcased is built around the iconic original house. That’s an intriguing evolution. The house serves as an orphanage where, on the wall, we see children and staff in a group shot. One giant figure is scratched out. When the four main characters appear, with interest in buying the now-empty town for some dumb reason, we find an older woman is still squatting in the town. Leatherface lives there two. He steps in to protect her.

By now, we get it. It’s Leatherface. No mask, obstructed by shadows. Like Michael Meyers, we see an iconic socialized monster before his anger is relit.

Lame.

Was he an orphan? Or the orphanage just moved into his house? What happened to people, bodies, and blades? Who did the reconstruction of the house? Was Leatherface hired for maintenance? Was he a creepy squatter nobody could move? Where is everyone in town (it once had a population of 1974 after all)? How does a town just spring up and empty so quickly? I hope we learn how this happened.

But we don’t. It was terribly reinforced if we do (and I missed it). As pleasingly as the movie starts in world-building, it equally succeeds in immediately circling the bowl in storytelling.

Spoiler: there’s a red herring with the character named Richter. You meet a good-looking but gruff mechanic at a gas station. He is being a little creepy. You’ll probably guess this troublemaker is part of the Leatherface family if you know the original movie. I immediately fell for the bait. Which only let me down more to realize there is no Sawyer family in this movie. See, Richter was just a character to move the plot along. But it also seemed like he knew something about Leatherface or the orphanage. It was almost like he was going to come around and say, “you just unleashed the beast. We’ve been protected in this town.” I thought he would provide the answers I was seeking… but then he was killed. And with it, my explanations. That sucked.

This Chainsaw movie even brought back the “Final Girl” from the first film to closely follow the Halloween Returns formula. Like Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween, this character was obsessed with killing Leatherface. I assumed it was the original actress because the performance was terrible, but Marilyn Burns had passed away. The producers, writers, and directors should be ashamed of themselves. Show a little bit of interest in telling a memorable story without copying a gimmick. A gimmick that couldn’t be reproduced fully without Marilyn Burns. It’s like if Star Trek 2 suddenly introduced lightsabers from their communicators.

We’re off the rails at this point. Now it’s just a dumb, modern, murder, and CGI-gore fest. Just what kids need to be seeing these days. The first movie was so unique that it is actually artistic. But this film is just a lame Heavy Metal cover band who doesn’t get it.

My biggest problem with the film is tied to my dislike of horror movies today. There is something unique about the 80’s movie monsters. Most producers and filmmakers didn’t pick up on it at first. And as such, many of the franchises went in wacky directions.

In the ’80s, the monsters were unrealistic non-humans. Pinhead, Freddy, Jason, Chucky, and Pumpkinhead were fantasy monsters. As much as Superman or The Hulk. Arguably Michael Meyers was revealed to be non-human as he started showing superhuman strength (stabbing a full-grown man to a wall or walking away from gunshots and a two-story fall).

Leatherface is always considered in this group of 80s monsters, but he really isn’t a fantasy creature. He’s very dangerous and mentally unstable. He could exist. The gross skin masks he wears make him seem more unrealistic, but there’s really nothing supernatural to this guy. It makes him even more uneasy to watch. Watching the incredibly amped-up gore and murder felt nothing like the original movie. This movie trades CGI kills for actual suspense and horror. It’s the exact same path the Halloween movies chose, and it’s very disappointing. When people got killed in those movies, it was a shock. Slasher films were about the shock. But a “slash” is different than mowing down 20 people on a bus. That just felt like something we’ll see in the news someday.

In the original second film, which is a much different film than the original Texas chainsaw massacre, Toby Hooper tried to give more depth to the family. Family. We found out that Leatherface was a little bit of a mousy, sad, sexually confused boy who wanted love from his family and even a victim. He was capable of compassion. But that storyline is written out of this storyline entirely. A huge miss. Granted, the original part one and part two were much different in tone, but it allows a new third movie to play with genres as well. As an audience, we are already trained to accept both tones. Even if the producers decided to forgo some of the humor in the original Part 2, I really wish they kept the story going to give us something new about this Leatherface character. At one point in the 2022 film, an old and tired Leatherface is caught with his back to the Final Girl. But he gets up and just walks past her with no violence. A massively puzzling scene. Without backstory, that makes no sense.

So while this remake is technically different than its predecessor in terms of setting, it leads to the same cat and mouse chase. This is fine because, frankly, that’s how a slasher movie is designed. But the addition is an extreme dose of disturbing gore and murder. Part of the magic of early horror movies is that we needed our imagination to fill in the blanks. They just didn’t have special effects that were super realistic. Sure, we see Tom Savini’s art direction when we saw Jason Voorhees’ unmasked head slide down a machete blade. It’s shocking, but it’s obviously not real. It’s silly, spooky fun that isn’t replicated in a high CGI bloodbath of realism full of thrown chainsaws, an unstoppable Hulk, and a blood-soaked bus. You can almost hear the producers say, “turn up the gore. This is what the audience wants!”

Maybe I sound like I am going soft in my old age. I am technically a horror fan. Horror in the 1980s childhood was special, and this 2022 film simply is not. We had Fangoria and movies that kids could challenge themselves with. It helped us be brave against the monsters under our bed.

Now it’s merely murder porn. We are more entertained by taking lives violently than ever before.

Spoiler: Want to know what it looks like to suffer from a running chainsaw in your stomach while nothing but fear and death fill your final thoughts? Then you’ll love the unusually long gaze of people dying in this film. I don’t know; I didn’t feel anything but sadness. At least in most slasher films, the big bully gets his in the end. This ending just beat a woman who was already trying to recover from a school shooting trauma. These are some mean filmmakers.

So as a massive fan of the monsters from my childhood, I’m pretty disappointed continually seeing these off-the-mark reboots. If the goal was to continue the story that was started in our youth, that’s one thing. Ghostbusters: Afterlife shows that maybe that’s possible. But so far, all these 80s horror reboots are high risk. A couple made decent profits but were quickly forgotten by fans.

Halloween Returns did well enough to earn two sequels. I’m assuming filmmakers are hoping for this trajectory. But I’m not. There’s nothing that makes me want to see what happens to the Leatherface character in this film’s universe. I guess I’ll have to wait until the next direct sequel attempt. How much garbage will we eat until we can’t stomach these terrible attempts at breathing life into our favorite characters any longer?

Hollywood, if you’d ever like to actually continue stories from my childhood where you really want to consider the audience who loves your property, you better call me. I’ll fix it for you. Because I want to see better.