Netflix has finally dropped the Texas Chainsaw Massacre trailer, pulling the veil back on what this sequel/reboot will hold in store for new audiences. The quick answer to that? A story that feels very much like David Gordon Green’s Halloween (2018), another sequel/reboot that acts as a direct continuation of the first classic entry several decades after the initial encounter.

The trailer sets out to show that the passing of time has certainly not left Leatherface unscathed. His new human face mask droops grotesquely, a reflection of the age (and history) the killer carries with him. The town of Harlow, which is presented as Leatherface’s stomping grounds, is also mostly deserted and decrepit.

It’s as if the movie’s director David Blue García wanted to show the horror icon and his world have been largely depleted and forgotten (despite the many sequels and reboots the franchise has seen throughout the years at a pretty consistent rate). Of course, this sets up one of the movie’s main metaphorical evils: gentrification. Or, at the very least, privileged people moving in to remake the ghost town into a haven for career baristas and content creators (one of which gets chainsawed at the end of the trailer after threatening to ‘cancel’ Leatherface, phone in hand).

One of the most interesting aspects of the trailer is the return of character Sally Hardesty (played by Olwen Fouéré), the final girl from the 1974 movie. She drives off into the sunset in the back of a pick-up truck, laughing and screaming as Leatherface flails away with his chainsaw. This time around, Sally takes a full page from the Laurie Strode playbook, as seen in 2018’s Halloween, and ventures out to find her monster with a mind for bloody vengeance.

Texas Chainsaw
Netflix

This is where Texas Chainsaw Massacre starts to feel too similar to the latest Halloween flicks. There appears to be an interest in treating returning characters in the same way as those seen battling Michael Myers in the more recent showings. Sally is a shotgun-ready survivor that’s been waiting for news of Leatherface’s resurgence to put on her cowboy hat and go out on a hunt of her own. Like Halloween’s Laurie, Sally takes her trauma and turns it into a cause for personal protection, weapons training, and righteous retribution.

It remains to be seen how Sally behaves in the midst of her tormentor’s reappearance, but the connective tissue that ties her to Laurie is pretty apparent. That said, Laurie’s preparedness comes at the cost of her relationship with her family. It became obsessive and basically inspired her own daughter to keep her from infiltrating her own family. How Sally’s trauma unfolds is perhaps one of the new movie’s most promising aspects. It can also be it’s least interesting if it takes from Laurie’s too freely.

Another element that felt all too familiar in the trailer is Leatherface’s new selection of victims. There seems to be an interest in poking fun at ‘woke millennials’ that move into places to reshape them in their image, robbing them of their identity and economic composition. There was some of this in 2021’s Wrong Turn reboot and in Nia da Costa’s 2021 Candyman reboot/sequel. The trailer show’s some of the killings are there to rub that demographic’s nose in the proverbial shit, but it would do well to remember that the idea’s already been tackled a few times and quite well (especially in Candyman).

Texas Chainsaw
Netflix

There’s a lot to look out for in Netflix’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which premiers on February 18, 2022. Sequel/reboots seem to be the new order of the day in classic horror franchise revivals, a move that can reshape our appreciation of the other entries the upcoming movie jumps over to establish a direct sequel to the original. The trailer does showcase some impressive shots of Leatherface and his signature chainsaw kills, but only the full movie experience will tell if the story will break new ground or if it will rest too comfortably on the latest horror trends.