“Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (2022) seems to have been created solely in response to the criticism: there’s no way that gun-loving Texans would have lost to a chainsaw. Where were the guns? It’s Texas.
Instead of taking that criticism to heart and finding a reasonable explanation as to why no one there had guns, the movie skips over that and then doubles down on the narrative that a chainsaw beats guns.
Spoilers Ahead
For example, the movie begins with a premise that these millennial hipster gentrifiers come to this rural Texan town to open a restaurant. As a result of this background, they likely don’t own guns. But this town, where Leatherface lives, is a rural conservative town, as evidenced by the Confederate flag, which none of the townsfolk take issue with.
If they had continued down this path, it would make sense why Leatherface successfully mowed down a bus full of people; they were unarmed.
They also bring up this narrative about gun violence and school shootings, with the main character having survived one. However, they fail to make it compelling.
Again, they failed to make an issue that directly impacts our age group and younger, that directly affects Americans, and has for at least half a century, compelling. I remember hearing in elementary school that if you are being shot at, running in a zig-zag makes you harder to hit.
If you can’t make this topic compelling to American students, you are a bad writer. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of a single topic that could be more compelling to this audience.
The movie overall has a tone of being anti-gun, but then they half-ass a narrative of Lila (Elsie Fisher) overcoming her fear of guns by handling them. This is a pro-gun narrative. Essentially, they can’t commit to a stance, and no, I don’t mean that the movie is nuanced; it certainly isn’t capable of that.
It also feels incredibly tasteless to me to use this issue, in this way, in a horror movie.
According to CNN, as of Oct. 28, they have reported 26 deaths and over 100 injured victims in school shootings in 2025 alone. This number does not include the people who have to mourn the death of a loved one. It does not include the people who were traumatized by the shooting, and it most certainly does not include the community members who have to rebuild their lives and their trust in the world in its aftermath. The same article reports that in 2022, there were 80 school shootings, and in 2021, 74.
Why are you using the deaths of children in this way in this movie? I fail to see how it was necessary or relevant to its plot.
Did you just pick this topic because it was timely?
Once the murders start, they progressively give Leatherface (Mark Burnham) supernatural abilities.
For example, he breaks the chainsaw out of the wall, and it works perfectly, despite being there for an extended period of time. It can chop through metal, wood and flesh without even slowing down.
I’ve used a metal bandsaw before, a machine that is actually meant to cut through metal, and it worked slowly, even on thin pieces. This experience makes it hard for me to believe that Leatherface is just chopping through everything left and right with this ancient chainsaw. So, even though it isn’t said explicitly, I would argue that they gave him a magical chainsaw.
Then he gets shot multiple times, takes a chainsaw to the throat and drowns, and he comes out perfectly fine. They gave him super strength and a magical chainsaw, and we just have to live with that. We also have to live with the fact that no one dies the first time in this movie. Many of the characters experience life-ending injuries, and instead of using their second life to crawl to safety, they try to kill Leatherface. It’s just such a waste and becomes incredibly predictable by the end of the film.
The whole movie just reads as petulant because they are building up this huge narrative about guns, and then they don’t properly address it. Instead of making a proper counterargument to it, they just make the guy indestructible.
It’s such a cop out.
Honestly, if you just established Leatherface as a magical-mystical being with a chainsaw that cuts through anything from the get-go, nobody’s going to be here like, “Well, it’s Texas. They’ve got guns, he wouldn’t stand a chance with his chainsaw.” People would have accepted, even though it’s a weird premise, that he’s magical, so there’s not much that can be done against him.
But then you lose purpose in watching the movie, unless you are someone, and I will judge you for this, who just consumes gore for the sake of consuming it.
There’s really no point in watching a movie where you know the ending. Unless the town library conveniently happens to have some book that reveals how to defeat this guy, he’s just gonna chop down everything in his path until he decides not to.
I’m sorry, but if he’s murdered dozens of people, I don’t think a heartfelt speech about the power of friendship is really going to do much to convince him to stop.
So if he’s a magical being, you just lose the point of even watching the movie because, you know, how it’s going to end, or well, maybe not the specifics of where they’ll end it, because do you end it after the 24th or the 25th person he kills? The ending point is arbitrary.
There’s no one to root for, there’s nothing to do. There’s nothing for anyone to fight for because they’re gonna die anyway. It’s futile.
The entire movie really reads as though the director wanted to make this whole argument against ‘Well, if they just had guns, Leatherface wouldn’t have stood a chance,’ and when he realized that he couldn’t, he changed the rules on the viewers, like a child would do, because they are upset that they’re not winning.
That does not make a good plot.
I will say I like this one more than the original. But it’s not a good movie, I hated the original. And it is very obvious that it is written by an older person.
The film lacks a profound or nuanced understanding of anyone below the age of 35. I find it very difficult to believe that even the most vapid and superficial of influencers would think that starting a live stream to cancel Leatherface would actually stop him from murdering people. I genuinely don’t think anyone would believe that.
End of Spoilers
I had high hopes for this film because it brings up topics that I didn’t expect to see in a horror film like gentrification, gun violence, gun rights, topics that could be interesting and compelling to dive into in such an unexpected place, yet it fails to do anything meaningful with these significant issues, because it’s just so focused on being right and on being hateful.
The film had the opportunity to do something worthwhile, and it didn’t.
