Texas Chainsaw Massacre review – stupid but surprisingly fun horror update

There is a lot to dislike about this admittedly unnecessary remake of Tobe Hooper's 1974 horror The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, an 81 minute diversion that lives up to its iconic namesake in zero ways. It's crude and unsubtle, with confused messages about gun violence, gentrification and social media, none of which land or make much sense. But viewed as its own thing, it's also an effective and nasty horror yarn that gets its kicks – and hopes to give you yours – by laying on the gore in thick, red brushstrokes.

Discarding, like convoluted horror franchises are prone to do when not even the studio can make sense of the timeline anymore, the confusing sequels of the last thirty years, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (that's right: they took out the “the”) finds a huddle of unlikeable twenty-somethings – one played by Eighth Grade's Elsie Fisher – swarming on the now abandoned town of Harlow, Texas. Their plan is to start a new society in the shadow of its bad reputation. The locals insist it's a bad idea. Leatherface – now in his sixties and sporting heaps of grey hair – comes to prove this assessment right.

There is, of course, a tendency in modern horror to punish self-righteous millennials, whose wokeness makes them perfect targets for a killer who doesn't even know the definition of the word. The film doesn't hold back: the gore grows to absurd but knowing levels, as first-time filmmaker David Blue Garcia proves himself a dab hand at delivering inventive set-pieces and satisfying action, even showcasing a knack for composition along the way. It arrives, very quickly, at a particularly mean-spirited ending that leaves a real bad taste. But one assumes that was the intention.

None of this will go down well with diehard fans – it mocks the original's terror and makes an extended cameo of that film's iconic victim, Sally Hardesty (played here, in an extended cameo, as an older woman by Olwen Fouéré). But those less enamoured – or oblivious – might find some use for a breezy horror with no pretentiousness and some laugh-out-loud kills. You're at least left with the feeling that the person behind the camera has some talent. Now they just need to get their bloodied mitts on more original material, and something to say.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre is now streaming on Netflix.