“Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is one of Netflix’s earliest film releases of 2022 and was directed by David Blue Garcia. It stars Elsie Fisher, Sarah Yarkin, Olwen Fouéré, and Mark Burnham as Leatherface. It takes place nearly 50 years after the terrifying events of the 1974 original horror classic, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

It tells the story of a young group of internet influencers trying to bring change to an abandoned Texas town. However, the masked killer known as Leatherface lurks within the town and picks the visitors off one by one.

“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” franchise has been an inconsistent mess with multiple sequels and remakes never coming close to carrying the same grueling terror that was evoked in the 1974 original.

This film attempts to clean the slate by taking place after the original, simply erasing the sequels and continuations from the plot. This is not a new occurrence, with the “Halloween” series doing it not only once but twice over its 40-year cinematic lifetime.

However, while “Halloween” did this in a way that efficiently carried on the story in a clear and respectful way, the same cannot be said about this film.

This film suffers from everything a movie can suffer from such as frustrating characters, horrendous writing, and disrespect for the films that came before it. As an audience, we do not get enough time with the characters to understand them and feel any sense of emotion when they encounter Leatherface.

There is an attempt to give these characters some defining characteristics, but it is obviously thrown in to put a band aid over the bloodbath that is the script. But the true failure in this movie lies in the disrespect of the lone survivor of the original film.

In this remake, she is seen as an old, scared individual who is haunted by the memory of Leatherface and the murder of her friends. It was mentioned earlier that she has been hunting Leatherface for many years before this film occurs. So, in the film, we are led to believe that she is going to go against the mask wearing maniac that has haunted her for decades in an intense altercation.

Instead, she is portrayed as a character that looks to have never touched a gun or taken any precautions for this inevitable reunion. This, as a result, just shows the lack of respect and thought that went into creating a cohesive story.

The one thing that I can say is slightly positive about this film is that there are some interesting shot choices and competent camera work that can be appreciated.

However, that does not save this disheartening film from placing itself among the multiple failed attempts of continuations in this horror franchise.

“Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is a highly flawed and uninspired movie that relies too much on cheap kills while failing to respect the efforts of earlier films in the series.

Drew Coffey is a freshman television and video production major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or at akcoffey@eiu.edu.