The nauseating cycle of endless reboots, remakes, and prequels has afflicted horror more so than any other genre, and few properties in particular have been run into the ground more often than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and 2017’s Leatherface sums up the IP’s fall from grace in a nutshell.
Tobe Hooper’s seminal 1974 classic spawned three direct follow-ups of its own, before Marcus Nispel’s do-over helped usher in the 21st Century’s obsession with regurgitating any recognizable scary story for modern audiences. The remake got a prequel, which was followed by a standalone sequel to the original, itself abandoned and then given another coat of paint when Leatherface decided to act as a prequel to the very first installment, but not the remake that had already gotten a prequel of its own. Got that?
Needless to say, it was terrible, with the unnecessary eighth entry in a saga that had long since overstayed its welcome taking the requisite pasting from critics and earning just $1.6 million at the box office. Was that the end of the road for the iconic villain? Of course not, because last year’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre ignored all of the convoluted canon to play the legacy sequel card 2018’s Halloween popularized.
For reasons that can’t be explained, though, Leatherface has come out of nowhere to stage a blood-soaked and incredibly hostile takeover of Netflix’s worldwide Top 10, after FlixPatrol revealed it to have debuted as the eighth most-watched feature on the planet among subscribers. Why? F*cked if we know, but it’s not even the worst Texas Chainsaw has to offer, which says it all about the brand.