The upcoming Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel will, once again, ignore everything bar the 1974 original, but here's why the series' best option is following the 2003 remake. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is widely considered one of the greatest horror movies ever, with director Tobe Hooper crafting a sweaty, disturbing nightmare that's hard to shake off. Hooper would return many years later for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, with this sequel pitting Dennis Hopper's crazed lawman against Leatherface and his family.
Hooper knew he'd never top the visceral terror of the first movie, so The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is instead a gory horror-comedy. While horror franchises like Halloween can have confusing continuities, Texas Chainsaw Massacre might have the messiest timeline of all. Between various remakes and reboots, it's impossible to tie the events of every entry together, while many Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies often opt to ignore everything but Hooper's peerless original.
That's why the upcoming legacy sequel Texas Chainsaw Massacre will be doing the same and features a group of characters running into Leatherface decades after the 1974 movie. It will also be following the Halloween 2018 formula, and like that sequel featured the return of Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, the sole survivor of the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré) will come face to (Leather)face with her tormentor again. The trouble is, nearly every sequel has branded itself as starting fresh and only referencing the original, but the best course for the franchise would be a sequel to 2003's Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which ranks as one of the better franchise outings.
The 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake was understandably divisive when it was announced. Reviews at the time of release weren't kind either - especially Roger Ebert's scathing assessment - but over time the movie has found fans for its unrelenting tone, great cinematography and R. Lee Ermey's terrifying secondary villain. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake is also the most profitable for the series and spawned a prequel three years later that filled in some narrative gaps. The movie ended with Jessica Biel's hero escaping, having sliced off one of Leatherface's arms, while the cannibal himself was left still at large.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2003 in many ways triggered the horror movie remake craze of that decade, but it's held up quite well and found slasher villain Leatherface at arguably his scariest since the first movie. If nothing else, it's certainly one of the better entries in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series in recent years, and a better franchise reboot would explore what happened in the remake's aftermath. The movie left several narrative threads dangling, and it would be very intriguing to see Jessica Biel (The Sinner) return to the horror genre for another Leatherface encounter. This legacy sequel approach also beats yet another Texas Chainsaw Massacre that only follows from the 1974 movie - only to utterly pale in comparison to it.