Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022 Breaks A Recent Final Girl Reboot Trend
Warning: Spoilers ahead for 2022's Texas Chainsaw Massacre!
Netflix's Texas Chainsaw Massacre serves as yet another movie sequel that reboots a major horror franchise, but it also breaks a trend involving the survival of iconic "final girls." The 2022 Texas Chainsaw Massacre installment from David Blue Garcia features the return of the 1974 original movie's sole survivor Sally Hardesty. This move continues the formula of thrusting traditional final girls back into the spotlight, following Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in the new Halloween trilogy and Sidney Prescott's (Neve Campbell) return in Scream 2022. Sally, Laurie, and Sidney are three of the most notable final girls in their respective horror canonical–and sometimes retconned–timelines.
Marilyn Burns first played Sally in Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, surviving an attack from Leatherface and the cannibalistic Sawyer family. Nearly 50 years later, the character makes her grand return to the newly retconned timeline with a title that acts as a direct sequel to the 1974 movie, but this time, the character is played by Olwen Fouéré. While Leatherface was living in the derelict town of Harlow under the care of the owner of an orphanage, Sally went on to become a Texas Ranger, who was motivated in hunting down and killing the chainsaw-wielding madman. It took decades, but after a new attack in the town in Harlow, Sally Hardesty has the opportunity to avenge the brutal murder of her brother and friends, as well as her own attack.
When Sally gets a chance to take back her own life, she quickly decides to directly go after the person responsible, following in the footsteps of Halloween's Laurie and Scream's Sidney. The reboots of Halloween and Scream also featured the original final girl facing their masked attacker. Though all three legendary characters had similar motivations, Texas Chainsaw Massacre breaks the recent trend by killing its franchise's famed final girl. Whereas both Laurie and Sidney lived to see another day in Halloween Kills and Scream 2022, respectively, Sally gets killed when she reencounters Leatherface, proving that final girls aren't always safe in reboots, while essentially going against the trend of labeling final girls in reboots as untouchable.
Incorporating legacy characters has been an integral element for recent reboot sequels (or "requels"), especially in the horror genre. By tying back to the franchise roots, series like Halloween, Scream, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre have felt that it's necessary to bring back legacy figures as a way to honor the past while propelling the franchises in new directions. However, Texas Chainsaw Massacre doesn't give Sally much time to shine, allowing Leatherface to quickly kill the character with a chainsaw to the abdomen. To make matters worse, he throws her body in a pile of garbage. However, in typical final girl fashion, Sally doesn't go down easily, taking a few more shots at Leatherface.
Sally also breaks the mold by convincing the reboot's protagonists not to run from the current conflict despite how dangerous it may be. While Laurie and Sidney have convinced others how to be prepared but from a distance, Sally encourages Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Lila (Elsie Fisher) to go after Leatherface without any real preparedness; otherwise, she will always feel haunted by him. Though her mindset makes sense, Sally will no longer be in the equation due to her demise. The same can't be said for Laurie and Sidney, who still have a future as final girls still alive and ready to fight another day in future sequels for rebooted horror franchises.