A24’s New Texas Chainsaw Looks Set to Push the Family Horror Further
Curry Barker’s planned Texas Chainsaw Massacre film for A24 is still early in its public life, but the first clear creative signal is already visible: he wants to focus on the family. Speaking to Total Film, Barker said he intends to do something “different” with the franchise by leaning into what he called “the uncomfortability of family” and the rawness of what is happening at the farm.
That emphasis matters because the Texas Chainsaw series has always drawn part of its power from the way horror and domestic space collapse into each other. Leatherface is frightening on his own, but the franchise’s deeper unease often comes from the social unit around him: the household logic, the rituals, and the sense that violence is normalized inside a family structure that no outsider can decode in time.
Barker’s comments suggest he sees that as underused territory rather than exhausted tradition. He argued that there is still substantial potential in the concept that has not yet been realized. That is a notable framing for a series that has already been rebooted, revived, and reinterpreted multiple times. Instead of promising scale or mythology, Barker is pointing toward intimacy and dysfunction.
The significance of the 2003 remake reference
One revealing detail is Barker’s affection for the 2003 remake, which he called his favorite entry in the franchise and described as the first horror film he saw as a child. That preference helps place his approach. The 2003 film, directed by Marcus Nispel, was a commercial success and became part of a broader wave of horror remakes in the 2000s. Barker’s attachment to it implies that his version may be less interested in museum-like reverence for the 1974 original than in translating the property for a contemporary sensibility.
That does not mean abandoning the core identity of the series. Barker explicitly says he wants to build on what is already there. The distinction is important. Franchise horror now often swings between empty nostalgia and over-explained reinvention. A tighter focus on family, if handled seriously, could offer a middle path: preserve the fundamental terror while giving the emotional and social mechanics more weight.
Why this angle could work
Family horror remains potent because it turns the place associated with care and belonging into a site of threat. Texas Chainsaw has always contained that idea, but Barker appears to want to make it central rather than atmospheric. The promise is not just more Leatherface. It is a more uncomfortable examination of the system around him.
For A24, that approach also makes strategic sense. The studio has built part of its genre identity on films that draw dread from relationships, interior damage, and social claustrophobia rather than from body count alone. A Texas Chainsaw film that foregrounds family as the engine of horror would fit that broader lane while still serving a well-known property.
There is still very little concrete detail about plot or style, and Barker himself has not yet shown exactly what form this deeper family exploration will take. But his early remarks are specific enough to matter. They suggest a film trying to rediscover the franchise not through bigger mythology, but through a sharper reading of the house at its center.
If that instinct translates to the screen, the next Texas Chainsaw Massacre may be most disturbing not when the saw starts, but when the family dynamic does.
This article is based on reporting by Gizmodo. Read the original article.
