Texas Chainsaw Massacre Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs

3. It Fatally Lacks Suspense

The basic expectation of any Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie is that Leatherface stalks a group of hapless victims around a claustrophobic location before brutally slicing them up with his trusty chainsaw, right?

While this new film mostly delivers on the gore front, the various "suspense" sequences largely fall pretty short of the mark.

Far too many times, we're forced to sit through an unremarkable, over-familiar set-piece in which a character quietly hides from Leatherface or attempts to silently escape him, and it quickly becomes repetitive.

It probably doesn't help that the characters are mostly unlikeable and so audiences will just be waiting for Leatherface to brutalise them, but there's very little in the way of tension during these delineated scenes.

The film's generally snappy pacing ensures they don't drag things down too much, but these sequences nevertheless feel like they were drawn out to pad the scant runtime.