The 1974 film “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” was, despite its flaws, a captivating, groundbreaking film that would go on to become a staple of the horror genre. So of course, Hollywood did what it does to all halfway-decent horror movies — release an onslaught of terrible sequels that tarnish the original’s reputation by association.

Despite the less-than-stellar history of horror movie sequels, I had high hopes that Netflix’s stab at the slasher classic would be halfway decent. It’s a direct sequel to the 1974 original, rather than another entry in the long and tired TCM franchise. Retconning the other follow ups to the original TCM would give Netflix much more creative freedom, allowing it to make something truly unique and memorable.

Or so I hoped.

The film stars a duo of influencers, Dante and Melody, along with Dante’s girlfriend and Melody’s younger sister, Lila, who’s also the survivor of a school shooting. It seems like the filmmakers really wanted the main cast to be walking Gen-Z stereotypes. They’re on their way to give an old, abandoned Texas town a facelift and have invited their celebrity friends along for the ride.

When Dante and Melody kick an old woman named Ginny out of an orphanage she claims to own, she suffers a heart attack and is whisked away to the hospital. Accompanying her is Dante’s girlfriend, two cops and one of the orphans she took care of — a man who audiences will instantly pinpoint as Leatherface. When Ginny dies en route to the hospital, Leatherface is enraged, and he takes revenge on all the town’s newcomers, blaming them for the death of his caretaker. He also cuts off Ginny’s face and wears it as a mask, for old time’s sake, I guess.

“Texas Chainsaw Massacre” comes with the horror movie cliches we love to hate. Blood and gore are used for the sake of blood and gore, characters die in the dumbest ways imaginable and Leatherface is given superhuman endurance, surviving a multitude of things no human would ever realistically survive. He also has superhuman strength, apparently, somehow being able to rip a man’s hand clean off without breaking a sweat.

To make things worse, the story, for the most part, makes absolutely no sense. At the beginning, it’s explained that Leatherface was never found, so how was he transferred to an orphanage? Also, why an orphanage and not a mental asylum, or something he’d clearly be more in need of? Those who watched the original TCM may also wonder, how is Leatherface able to walk straight? Ginny was also the rightful owner of the building she was kicked out of, so it doesn’t make sense that she never shows her deed to the influencers or the cops that kick her out.

The worst part of the movie is how poorly it handles the character of Sally Hardesty. After getting terrorized by a group of butchers in the middle of nowhere, Sally now lives as … a butcher in the middle of nowhere. Go figure. The movie tries to make her out as a hero out for revenge against Leatherface for what he did to her and her friends, but it fails miserably at that. Like all the other characters, Sally is a complete idiot. When she has the perfect opportunity to kill Leatherface, holding a shotgun to his head at point blank range, she chooses not to pull the trigger and tries to get him to say her name and the names of the people he killed instead. Shockingly, this genius decision backfires horribly on her and the two other surviving main characters. The movie’s handling of Sally is so bad it’s genuinely insulting. Marilyn Burns is rolling in her grave as we speak.

Just like Leatherface butchers people and wears their face as a mask, this movie butchers an already-dead franchise and wears its face as its own. If you’re looking to watch something that will make you hate Netflix, Gen Z and the state of Texas, I’ve got just the movie for you.

Will Duffy can be reached at [email protected].