I had an extremely hard time understanding why this is so highly regarded. There wasn’t much at all that really irked me, but rather annoyed me and made me want to turn the movie off. I know this is an unbelievably hot take, but I just don’t see what most other people see in this movie. I don’t even think it was very well made.

The first reason I didn’t like it was that I thought it was far more obnoxious and loud, rather than scary. All but one scene shocked me, and most of the imagery felt like it was trying way too hard to be scary and disturbing. The chainsaw noises, yelling, and especially the screaming made this really tedious for me to watch. It was just way too much for me, and made me want to stop watching it, and not in the way you want a horror movie to do that. I found it far more overwhelming and over-the-top than effective.

I also really didn’t like any of the characters whatsoever. None of them had any depth at all, in fact, so little that it was pretty shocking to me. I didn’t actually care if any of them survived because the movie never gave me a reason to, and Franklin was absolutely insufferable as a character. I realize they probably wrote him this way intentionally, but it didn’t help me like the movie any more than I did, and quite literally did the opposite. I honestly can’t name many other movies that had more poorly written characters than this movie.

Adding to that, both the acting and directing were really, really bad to me. I understand the budget was extremely low, even for the time, but even then, I think they could have done much better. I never once believed the people were in a movie, and most of the film felt amateurish and not cinematic at all. A lot of the scenes almost had that “test footage” feel to them, too, like they were the first take and not the final one. I don’t even know how to describe all of this, but it’s not even that it felt cheap, but rather just low quality.

And even after all the negative things I’ve had to say, there was actually something that I thought was even worse about the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and that was the story. There was no story. It all felt like a random sequence of events, partially due to the lack of any character development (not even a little bit), and partially due to the lack of any actual plot structure. It would be hard to even really differentiate this film into three different acts because nothing ever felt like it was really ever building up to anything. Then, when you get towards the end, the movie resolves in the most random and sudden way possible, which somehow made me feel underwhelmed even though I wasn’t even into the movie in the first place.

The other thing I have to say about the story is, what was the point? It was neither entertaining to me nor did it have any meaning or message. It was all just cannon fodder in my opinion, and didn’t even warrant its existence. Why did this movie need to be made? What did it have to say? Absolutely nothing.

All of this made for a movie that had absolutely abhorrent pacing and felt far longer than ninety minutes. Literally the only thing I actually thought was effective was Leatherface’s first appearance. With all the horror movies and tropes I’m used to, I didn’t expect him to first show up in the way he did. I can’t think of anything else that I honestly liked, though.

I think it’s safe to say that this wasn’t a movie made for me.