Netflix’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre deals in gory kills and a messy agenda

polygon.com:

It’s easy to see why filmmakers keep trying to build a franchise around Leatherface, the hulking masked maniac first introduced in the 1974 splatter classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Like Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger and Chucky — or even like Frankenstein’s monster and Dracula — Leatherface has a familiar name and a ghoulish visage, highly marketable to fright fans. If there were a Mount Rushmore of horror-movie villains, Leatherface would be on it.

Yet for nearly four decades now — from the first Chainsaw sequel in 1986 to Netflix’s new film, confusingly titled Texas Chainsaw Massacre — the idea of a Leatherface series has never really caught on. Every few years, it seems, someone takes a shot at rebooting or restarting the whole Chainsaw cinematic universe, with the intention of making multiple installments. When the whole project inevitably fizzles, another set of writers, directors, and producers comes on board and starts over again.

Netflix’s new Texas Chainsaw Massacre has a large creative team, not all of whom were involved from start to finish. The major names to know are Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues, who co-wrote the story and are among the movie’s producers. (Newcomer Chris Thomas Devlin is the credited screenwriter, while David Blue Garcia is the director, having taken over mid-production from Andy and Ryan Tohill.) Álvarez and Sayagues previously collaborated on the well-received 2013 Evil Dead reboot, and on the first two entries in the Don’t Breathe series. If there’s a theme uniting their work — this Chainsaw included — it has to do with broken and abandoned spaces, and the sometimes shifty people who nestle deep within them.

The new film stars Elsie Fisher (best-known as the