The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise has shown a lot of endurance since the first film was released in 1974. There have been multiple sequels, reboots, and even a prequel titled Leatherface that was released in 2017. Despite the franchise proving resilient, the only film that holds up and received critical acclaim was the first.
The quality of the recent attempts to reinvigorate the franchise has been lacking, but that’s not stopping Netflix from trying its hand. Produced by Fede Alvarez of Don’t Breathe fame, Texas Chainsaw Massacre is taking a similar approach to the 2018 Halloween reboot that acted as a direct sequel to the first film and ignored all the others.
Entertainment Weekly released a couple of stills from the film and also revealed that it will be released on Feb. 18, 2022. The stills don’t show much outside of our first look at Gunnar Hansen as the iconic Leatherface and the young ensemble cast that will likely serve as his victims.
Not much is known about the film’s plot outside of the fact that it’s a direct sequel. However, the film will not take place directly after the events of the 1974 original. According to Alvarez, the main characters are millennials.
“I think the first movie really hit a nerve when portraying that culture clash between the countryside and the city,” Alvarez told Entertainment Weekly. “Back in the seventies, the hippies were representing the youth of the city. This time, they’re more like millennial hipsters from Austin who are very entrepreneurial and have a dream of getting away from the city and back to the countryside. They’re trying to gentrify small-town America⏤and let’s just say they encounter some pushback.”
Similar to how there was an older Michael Myers in the Halloween reboot, Texas Chainsaw Massacre will be featuring an older version of Leatherface.
“It’s basically the same character, who is still alive,” Alvarez said of Leatherface. “Our take on it was this guy probably disappeared after everything he’s done. You know, how do you catch a guy who has a mask? Once he removes the mask and runs away, it’s very easy for him to hide somewhere. This story will pick it up many, many years after the original story. He’s been in hiding for a long, long time, trying to be a good person. These people arriving in this town are going to awaken the giant.”
Everything Alvarez is saying sounds like a classic premise for a gory horror film. Texas Chainsaw Massacre will be directed by a relative newcomer in David Blue Garcia, who has only one directing credit under his belt: 2018’s Tejano.
