We’re no stranger to remakes and adaptations. Horror gaming has been given the big-screen treatment a lot lately, including Markiplier’s box-office hit Iron Lung and the new liminal horror movie Exit 8. The genre is booming, and most of the time, I’m excited to see fresh new takes on things.
I’ve also really enjoyed recent installments of long-running movie franchises like Saw X and the 2018 version of Halloween, two surprise hits I wasn’t expecting.
Adding too much backstory could spoil the Texas Chainsaw Massacre story
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes horror benefits from expansion on the source material. IT: Welcome to Derry is a great example of where this worked, as Stephen King’s novel was huge and Pennywise has been around a long time, giving a TV show the opportunity to explore an entirely different era.
My concern with Texas Chainsaw Massacre getting a longer-form series is that Leatherface is more exciting when he’s a mysterious character. The franchise is already very large, with nine films, a comic, a novel, and two video game adaptations. By adding a TV show into the mix, it feels like we’re just milking an idea that has nothing left to give.
The most recent entry into the franchise, simply called Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022), was a train wreck. I hated it, and so did many others, with critics awarding it a 31% on the Tomatometer. Its audience score is even lower, at 25%.
Leatherface’s origin story has been altered over the years, too, so the timeline has become pretty messy. The TV show has a lot of work to do to give audiences a satisfying look at this world, and I’m concerned they won’t be able to, given how each movie has offered its own, sometimes contradictory, take on Leatherface’s lore.
There’s just too much Texas Chainsaw Massacre out there already for me to be excited about the show. As always, I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I don’t think they’ll be able to match the amazing 70s movie, which was groundbreaking at the time and still influences filmmakers to this day.
We don’t know much about the TV series yet, but I am at least hopeful that they try to explore new things, perhaps even beyond Leatherface and the Sawyer Family. But my first impressions aren’t great, and we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
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