Movie Reviews

‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ Review: Bad [really bad] to the bone

Published

4 years ago

February 18, 2022

Sometimes, like it or not, a horse with a broken leg needs to be shot and sadly the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise is in desperate need of euthanasia if only to put us out of our misery.

Let’s face it, while the original remains a horror classic, its successors have been less than remarkable. The film gained an impressive remake back in 2003 and from there the franchise has just churned out action-based body horror after body horror with Leatherface being the central focus. But the quality of these films is as varied as the canon of Leatherface’s last name.

There have been eight films total in the Chainsaw oeuvre save this latest one from Netflix which premieres on Friday, February 18 in the U.S. Yeet! Right? Welcome to the Legendary years.

The movie stars Sarah Yarkin, Elsie Fisher, and Mark Burnham: the iconic monster originally created by Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel. Of course, there’s a bunch of red shirts for chainsaw fodder and a weird callback to the original as Sally (Olwen Fouéré) returns for the worst legacy character cameo I’ve ever seen. It’s not really a spoiler to reveal that. After your massive eye roll, you’ll thank me later for the hint. Plus it’s in the massively plot-holed trailer featuring a polaroid that shouldn’t exist.

I’m going to try and explain the plot, but if there was ever a more on-the-nose movie title in cinematic history this would be it. Also, it’s the same premise as any other in this series so get ready for redundancy.

A quartet of young adults in a Tesla (so modern!) are making their way to the state in the title, specifically, Harlow Texas, where for whatever reason Melody (Yarkin) has purchased a building —maybe the entire town (who knows?)—- as a historic renovation project.

A building in the lot is still being occupied by a woman squatter and her huge, mentally challenged ward. If you guessed who the latter is, congratulations you’ve just completed your course in banal screenwriting 101.

After the police are called to have the occupants removed there’s an accident and Leatherface is triggered into becoming his murderous old self out for revenge.

Cue the tour bus loaded with potential investors? Clean up crew? Party bus? Again, who knows. But they pull into town and there’s enough of them to justify the third noun in the movie’s title as Leatherface retrieves the second one.

So there you have it: the plot. Familiar right?

From here the movie just becomes your average slasher loaded with gore. There’s no character development, there’s no irony, there’s no cohesiveness. It’s about as empty as the ghost town they’re in. Keep in mind this is meant to be a direct sequel to the original.

That being said, the gore effects are pretty impressive. Each kill outdoes the last and there’s a massive bus massacre sequence that is the film’s one true showstopper.

The two female leads do well in acting (or reacting) to the actions they’re given. But don’t expect much because their shining moments come in the third act which is still a lot of running and screaming.

Director David Blue Garcia is obviously dealing fan service, but even that is unbelievably flawed. There’s no dead armadillo throwback, no window jumping scene, no ground-level track shot, no pre-credits disclaimer scroll. C’mon man, give us one “a-ha!” moment.

There is a nostalgic John Larroquette voiceover that’s highly appreciated.

The real star here is cinematographer Ricardo Diaz who seems to understand the assignment. His gorgeous shots of a dead sunflower field are haunting and surreal. He gives life to this lackluster film and his action shots are gold-star film work.

Most people are going to be talking about the ending; an indelible punch with enough shock it’s going to sit with you for a while. It’s a bold move and a good one, it’s just sad it comes minutes before the credits roll.

Overall body horror fans and splatter hounds are going to appreciate Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There’s a certain genius behind the visuals and choreography.

But in retrospect, this film, although not the worst in the series, has no essence. It’s a bunch of realized storyboards that make no sense in narrative form. Forget about homage, forget about canon and forget about anything fresh. It’s sadly just not here.

It feels as though the filmmakers are the kinds of people who fast forward through the character development parts of a film to get to the action sequences.

I feel as though Scream fans were afraid this treatment was going to happen to the latest film in that series. Thankfully that didn’t happen.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) is likely to rank near the bottom of most people’s lists in this series. With a new studio and plans for more sequels, let’s hope it’s all uphill from here.

Header image: Yana Blajeva

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Movie Reviews

‘ZombieCON Vol. 1’ Gets the Con Right. The Zombies Arrive When They Want To.

Published

2 hours ago

April 28, 2026

Luna Gray

ZombieCON Vol. 1 follows Rocket’s Rockets, a cosplay crew who are three-time regional anime convention champions, two of whom also wrote the film alongside their director, and it delivers a genuinely heartfelt love letter to nerd culture.

Just think Knights of Badassdom, a horror film that needs you to understand why these people care about what they care about before it can ask you to care about them. Although, I think the whole “Cosplay is lame”! Thing died out a long time ago.

The Comedy

The practical makeup effects look like the work of actual cosplayers competing, not Hollywood’s approximation of cosplayers competing, and the distinction is the difference between a film that is looking at this world from the outside and one that has been living in it.

The characters carry the specific mixture of expertise and softness that comes from living inside a somewhat shunned culture. However, ZombieCON Vol. 1 leans into that culture in a loving, non judgemental way.

The Scott Pilgrim energy in the fight staging earns its references rather than just pointing at them. The anime visual grammar is sincere, not ironic, which is the only register in which this kind of thing is actually funny. The film borrows inspiration from just about everyone but somehow manages to do it respectfully.

The Cast

Punkie Johnson came to this from Saturday Night Live, and the gap between her and the rest of the ensemble is perceptible in every scene they share. She finds the timing on lines that are still looking for their timing, lands the joke at the exact moment before the scene needs to move on, and the effect is that everything around her becomes more controlled in her presence.

Erin Áine as Claire carries the film’s stranger turns without explaining them. The character is asked to move from one kind of story into another, several times, in ways the film does not prepare you for, and Áine moves with it without telegraphing the transition or breaking register. Manny Luke’s Rocket is calibrated to produce friction from the opening scene, and Luke commits to it without softening it or winking at the audience about it.

What It Is

ZombieCON Vol. 1 has a first act that takes thirty-one minutes to produce its first zombie, a budget that shapes what the horror can do once the horror arrives, and a cast that makes both of those things survivable.

The audience for this kind of film has been burned before by entries that treat cosplay culture as the setup for a punchline. This one does not do that. It lives inside the culture rather than observing it, and the result is a horror comedy that earns the affection it is asking for even when the seams are showing.

ZombieCON Vol. 1 is free on Tubi.

Movie Reviews

‘Don’t Die’ Is a Good Friday Night Horror Film And That Is Enough.

Published

1 day ago

April 27, 2026

Luna Gray

Don’t Die hits UK digital April 27 via Miracle Media. Benjamin Stark wrote and directed it. It played Panic Fest 2024 and spent the better part of two years making the quiet festival rounds, waiting for the right audience to find it. That audience is you.

What Happens

Jenks, played by Theodus Crane, needs medication he cannot afford. He breaks into a small-town pharmacy after hours. This was supposed to be clean. Nobody was supposed to be there. The pharmacist, Julia, played by Virginia Newcomb, was working late. She gets shot. Not knowing what else to do, Jenks takes her exactly where she tells him to take her.

This turns out to be a remote cabin run by a small collective quietly distributing medication to people who cannot access it through legal channels. The Robin Hood framing is warm, and the film offers it genuinely before slowly removing the warmth.

The Turn

The group running the cabin is not irrational. They believe what they are doing matters. They believe the math is simple. People need blood and organs, medication costs money, two strangers showed up and nobody outside knows where they are. Jenks figures out what that math adds up to about two minutes before the film shows it explicitly, and Crane plays the moment of comprehension exactly right. Quiet. Still. The kind of fear that does not move.

Stark earns the horror here because the people doing terrible things are not doing them out of cruelty. They have a system. They have a purpose. No villain monologue. No sadistic speech. They are calm and businesslike about it. That calm is what makes the third act work. Horror is rarely as effective as when the threat makes a kind of sense.

The Cast

Crane carries it. He plays Jenks as a man who keeps choosing decency as the available options narrow, and that consistency is what makes the back half hit as hard as it does. The performance never reaches for sympathy. It does not need to.

Newcomb as Julia is the other weight-bearing wall. She has the harder job. Her character moves from victim to something more complicated without the script telegraphing the shift. She handles it without calling attention to the handling.

Joshua Burge rounds out the central trio as Randy, the friend who shows up when needed and clocks the situation faster than any reasonable person should. If you don’t have a Randy in your life, make sure to get one.

What It Is and Is Not

Don’t Die was marketed as horror. It earns the label by the end, but it arrives there through crime thriller territory, and the patience of the first two acts is deliberate and correct. The tension builds quietly. When the horror finally arrives it lands harder because of the time spent getting there.

The budget limitations are present and real. Small locations, a tight cast, minimal spectacle. Stark works within them rather than against them, and for the most part it does not show. The pacing stumbles in the back half, running about five minutes longer than it should in the wrong places. There are moments where the momentum stalls. Neither is fatal.

It does not have much to say about healthcare beyond using it as a mechanism for the plot. That is fine. Not every film needs a thesis. This one tells a good story, maintains tension across most of its runtime, delivers a few genuine scares, and knows exactly what it is. Most low-budget horror manages one of those things.

Don’t Die is on UK digital now. Good Friday night film.

Movie Reviews

Content Is Now on Digital. Watch It Twice.

Published

1 day ago

April 27, 2026

Luna Gray

Content, Adam Meilech’s screenlife horror satire, arrives on UK digital April 27 via GrimmVision following a strong festival run that included Grimmfest 2025. The whole film plays out across phones and laptop screens. It opens on a sham. It ends somewhere you did not expect to go.

What It Is

The opening scene drops you inside Therapals, a fake online therapy platform where the therapists are just untrained people trying to earn a paycheck. The first patient our protagonist connects with has the energy of an angry Ryan Reynolds and, with complete calm, tells her he is thinking about killing his neighbor.

From there Meilech begins stacking story on top of story in a way that will either lose you or thrill you, and which one depends entirely on your tolerance for the extremely meta. At the center is AJ, played by Meilech himself: actor, writer, director, stalker, kidnapper, psychopath.

While there is a clear line to be drawn from Content and Milk & Serial, Meilech provides a wonderful villain. His polite swagger and genuine enthusiasm make one of the most powerfuly wicked online personas I have seen in a while.

The Cast and the Method

The cast is Megan Boehmcke, Alex Mills, and Vaune Suitt alongside Meilech, operating under conditions that range from unpleasant to genuinely alarming. AJ records himself playing therapist to himself and plays the recordings back. He pays a stranger to pose as a mentor figure for his male actor, who believes he is in on a bit the whole time. He performs takes over and over in the Kubrick tradition until he gets what he wants. Eventually he just moves his lead into his apartment.

To get a real reaction during a shoot, he shows up and actually hits the actor. The poor actor, still in the scene, asks if they can reshoot. This dude is so desperate for a part, he is willing to show he can make his pain more entertaining.

Where It Sits

The several story arcs running at once can be genuinely hard to follow and Content is not interested in making things easier. That is a feature, not a flaw. The bad guy is normal looking. He lives in a shared apartment. He does not signal his intentions in any way that would help you see it coming. There is real secondhand cringe to watching private moments captured without the subjects knowing, which is the film’s most effective trick, and Meilech commits to it completely.

It lands somewhere between Milk and Serial and Creep in the first half, and ends up closer to Funny Games meets Better Watch Out by the final act. That is an unusual place to land. It is also exactly the right one. Content is available now on UK digital via GrimmVision.