I applaud the iconoclastic lengths this goes to to call bullshit on the concept of legacy sequels. Literally throwing the original movie's "final girl" heroine in the trash (even if it's not the same actor) is a level of mean-spirited I can't help but respect.

It's a shame that apart from such isolated moments and a bunch of gloriously vicious kills (the bus scene is the obvious standout, but the ending is pretty gruesome too), there's not that much else to it. The school shooting parallel is abjectly terrible, the gentrification angle's thematic potential remains unfulfilled, and the writers' invocation of 2020 Twitter trends, for all its heavy irony, still seems incredibly grating.

It's also striking that this film (unsuccessfully) wants to eat its cake and have it too, in that it pays lip service to the fact that Leatherface does not fit the bill of the classic slasher film villain, but still tries to position him as iconic figure with a lore-heavy aura.

It's definitely not the loathsome trainwreck it's being painted as by some, and the slasher subgenre could do worse than taking its cues from this rather than the Halloween reboot, but it ultimately gets tripped up by its own contradictory ambitions.