Never is this clearer than in a much-ridiculed trailer scene, where a party bus of potential investors decide to film Leatherface on their phone so he can get cancelled, rather than, you know, try to run away. He’s not exactly asking us to cheer Leatherface on as he dispatches them in a variety of disgusting ways but each death is backgrounded with the knowledge that this really didn’t need to happen. The script, from up-and-coming horror writer Chris Thomas Devlin (who has two Seth Rogen-produced films in the offing) views the invading twentysomethings as thoughtlessly disrespectful rather than maliciously so, but makes it clear that theirs is a situation of their own making (they make for an incredibly hard-to-empathise with ensemble). It will not take a series expert to figure out who her grown-up charge turns out to be and what might be on his mind as he returns to the town but it’s a little foggier as to who exactly we should be rooting for as blood and guts hit the fan. But when she dies on the journey there, all hell breaks loose. A stand-off ensues, albeit a short-lived one when the elderly woman collapses, being rushed to hospital with her one mysterious grown-up charge alongside. But on arrival, with Melody’s sister (Eighth Grade breakout Elsie Fisher) and Dante’s girlfriend (Nell Hudson) they encounter a resident who refuses to be turfed out, a former orphanage-runner (Alice Krige) who insists that she still retains the deed for her property and so will not be going anywhere. Melody (Sarah Yarkin) and Dante (Jacob Latimore) are bullish San Francisco-based Gen Zs, heading south for a business opportunity who have purchased the derelict town of Harlow with the idea of auctioning off retail space and turning it into a hipster haven for those bored of big city life (a local refers to them as “gentri-fuckers”). It is almost 50 years since a group of teens were brutally murdered by Leatherface, a refresher provided by OG narrator John Laroquette in the opening scene, served with a reminder that the massacre was survived by Sally (now played by acclaimed Irish stage actor Olwen Fouéré after Marilyn Burns died in 2014), who has been trying to track down the killer of her friends ever since.
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