A group of four friends Melody (Sarah Yarkin), Melody's sister Lila (Elsie Fisher), Dante (Jacob Latimore), and Dante's girlfriend Ruth (Nell Hudson) travel to the deserted city of Harlow, Texas with Melody seeking a fresh start for her sister Lila after her surviving a school shooting and also seeking to re-invent the town as a resort destination after having acquired it for cheap from the bank. The town has two residents a woman (Alice Krige) and her son (Mark Burnham) at the local orphanage who refuse to vacate claiming to be the rightful owners of the property. Calling the sheriff to remove the alleged squatters the woman begins to exhibit deteriorating health and the sheriff, Ruth, and the woman's son head off to the nearest hospital to find help. When the woman dies, her son goes into a vengeful rage killing the sheriff, Ruth, and his deputy and he takes the skin from his mother's face revealing him to be the killer from the unsolved Texas Chainsaw Massacre 50 years ago and who now seeks vengeance on Melody and her friends blaming them for his mother's death. Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouere) receives word of Leatherface's re-emergence and heads to Harlow to end him once and for all.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre marks the latest attempt to revive the Texas Chainsaw IP following the lapse in Millennium Media's rights after the troubled development and release of 2017's Leatherface prevented any further sequels produced by Millennium. Legendary Pictures purchased the IP in 2018 with Fede Alverez of the Evil Dead remake and Don't Breathe signing on as a producer. The movie was a troubled production with original directors, Andy and Ryan Tohill being fired following disagreements with the producers leading to replacement David Blue Garcia. Further bad press was generated when rumors circulated regarding poor test screening s which Alverez flat out denied and then the reveal that the film would be skipping a theatrical release and sold to Netflix. Netflix did surprising little to promote the film with no trailer released until January 31 for the film and the trailing receiving a rather mixed response, particularly for the "Bus scene" prominently featured in the trailer that is clearly intended as the film's big money moments with a rather stupid joke about the social media age. After viewing the film, Texas Chainsaw Massacre '22 isn't a trainwreck, but I almost wish it was because as bad as Texas Chainsaw 3D and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation were, they were at least fascinatingly bad. TCM '22 falls in line with entries like Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, the Platinum Dunes remake, or Leatherface (2017) in that their competent, but they're just "there" and nothing more.
In terms of the filmmaking it looks and feels like a Texas Chainsaw movie and even falls in line with the cinematography of the original 1974 film. The work on the older Leatherface for his mask and costume looks nicely filthy, wet, and disgusting, and the dilapidated town of Harlow in theory is a decent setting for this type of movie. I also thought Elsie Fisher was good as Lila and thought she was the most resonant character who fit well in the role.
In terms of the rest of the movie, it's pretty underwhelming. The other three characters in the group aside from Lila are just bland and forgettable and the bus full of prospective investors are basically just walking blood bags waiting for Leatherface to cut through them. Even the return of an older Sally Hardesty played by Olwen Fouere is underwhelming because despite Fourere's best efforts and doing her best to succeed Marilyn Burns the character is basically a less fun version of Dennis Hopper's Lefty Enright from Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and she makes some pretty stupid decisions in the movie (like having Leatherface at gunpoint and NOT pulling the trigger because she's shocked he doesn't remember her) and you probably could've easily written that character out with little effort and merged her role with the established character of Richter who's given much more prominence. It's clear the take on the character is inspired by Blumhouse's Halloween series, but it lacks the polish of them (the first anyway). And once again, the movie makes the mistake of trying to play Leatherface as "sympathetic". Granted the movie never goes as far as Texas Chainsaw 3D did when he became an anti-hero victim of mob justice, but the movie frames Leatherface's rampage motivated by the death of his mother with a certain level of "righteousness" and that's not how you create a monster you should be scared of. The movie has some pretty on the nose satire about gentrification (such as "the Bus scene") and it's pretty toothless when you're trying to play both sides as equally valid when one side has a man in hiding who ate people and turned their remains into furniture and wind chimes. I will say that I'm glad they didn't do yet another rehash of the Dinner Table scene, with the exception of Texas Chainsaw 3D that Dinner Table scene has been referenced in every single TCM film, so at least the filmmakers had the knowledge that another take would've been beating a dead horse.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022 is just more of the same. The best Texas Chainsaw follow-up remains Tobe Hooper's over the top comedy sequel Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and I think that speaks to how little meat there is to this franchise that the only way Hooper thought it could continue was by turning it into a bloodspattered take on The Three Stooges. The movie's not scary, it's mildly atmospheric, and Elsie Fisher is okay as Lila, but the movie has the same problems as other attempts to revive a series that keeps getting revived only to die a few minutes afterwards.
