Stephanie Bri

Empire Records is a testament of changing tastes. I didn’t see this movie in it’s prime back in the 90’s early 2000s when it would have impacted me. I saw it a couple of years ago when I was living alone in a trailer house I bought. At the time I thought it was one of those hidden gems I missed out on. Upon second viewing I am scratching my head wondering what I ever saw in this film.

For starters the acting is all over the place. Some of it is terrible, some is passable none of it is good. The story doesn’t make a lick of sense. The scenes feel like they are just cut together without any rhyme or reason. It reeks of 90s MTV. I just didn’t get into it the second time.

This has happened before. I would watch a movie and become instantly enamored with it. Then years later when I try to revisit said movie I question my own sanity. I did this with Ghost World. To this day I can’t figure out what I ever saw in that film.

I don’t mind growing older. My tastes are bound to change. I think I must have been going through a 90s nostalgia phase when I watched it the first time because that’s the only explanation I have for walking away impressed. This movie did nothing for me on my second viewing except make me miss going to Hastings to brows the CD section.

Once the nostalgia wore off I realized there was nothing there. Likely because I didn’t see it when it was new I don’t have nostalgia for the specific film just the time period. I can honestly say I have little nostalgia for the 90s though. I listen to music from my youth because that’s what you do when you turn 40. I don’t, however, reminisce the good old days. I hated the 90s during the time I lived through it. I was happy to be rid of that awful decade.

I don’t know what got into me the first time around but I can honestly say I am glad the spell was broken. I doubt I will ever revisit this movie again. It did nothing for me the second time and I expected to enjoy it. I went in remembering how much I liked it. But then I sat there pondering my own existence for watching such rubbish.

Sometimes you have to leave a movie in the past. This is one of those films. If you missed out on it during it’s first run chances are you missed it entirely. It doesn’t work in todays world. I kept thinking there were far too many employees for such a small record store. Even back in the day I would have felt it was over staffed. I don’t remember Hastings having that many employees and it was a much larger store.

Then there is the Hastings factor. Obviously there was a store called Music Town which was likely a stand in for Sam Goody. I didn’t care for how oppressed the workers acted being bought by a chain. They made it sound like working for a corporate store would ruin their ability to have good times. I have worked for franchises and I have worked for mom and pop shops and I can tell you there is no difference other than the franchise you don’t have to wonder if they are going to make payroll.

I didn’t like this movie upon second viewing. This is a rare case of falling out of love with something I once enjoyed so much I bought a physical copy on DVD to enjoy it again and again. I don’t even know what happened to that DVD but I assure you it won’t be getting popped into my Playstation console anytime soon. Maybe I was drunk the first time I watched it? I don’t know but all I can say is I will avoid it like the plague going forward.

I don’t talk about my previous engagement much because it was so long ago it doesn’t even feel real anymore. It’s almost like it never happened.

I am in love with a woman named Christina. We met on the internet via Twitter. It was a long courtship that began with us chatting about the NBA finals via private messages. I wouldn’t trad my relationship with her for the world. She is the most special person I have ever met. Yet I still occasionally remember my failed relationship that nearly ended in marriage.

At the time I thought getting married was something I wanted out of life. Looking back on it I couldn’t tell you why I believed in it then so strongly whereas today I find it laughable at best. I don’t have a very positive outlook on marriage these days. But that’s not the point of this essay. I wanted to explore my feelings on another subject, love.

Two summers ago I wrote a series of articles chronicling all the women I thought I loved over the years. As I wrote through that series I came to realize most of them were nothing more than infatuations. I had an idealized version of love in my head that doesn’t match the real thing. I can tell you from my experiences with Christina I now fully understand what true love feels like. I didn’t before I met her.

I write this unsure of how I feel about Carmen, the woman I nearly married. I know we became engaged in a whirlwind of emotions that sprang from both of our broken pasts. We wanted to get married so badly we didn’t even stop to realize there wasn’t any true love between us. I had feelings for her but they weren’t love as I know it now.

I had a dream last night I was getting back together with Carmen. It was a long and complicated dream that involved some deeply buried memories resurfacing. It put me in a state of mind where I was in a pretty bad mood all day today. I don’t want to think about Carmen and what happened to her. I don’t like dwelling on how our relationship ended because it reminds me of the guilt I felt for the way she turned out.

I don’t have feelings for her anymore. I now understand that what I felt for her at the time was not love. It was something else. The both of us were using one another to better our own lives. She was using me to escape an uncomfortable home life. I was using her to live out a fantasy of what the American dream was supposed to be. I had a job working at Dominos. She was working as a teachers assistant. We both had plans to hurry up and get married as quickly as possible. Of course we didn’t have the support of either family we just wanted to be joined together to escape our respective lives. In the end it didn’t work out. She wound up in a mental heath facility committed most likely for life as she went insane. I ended up throwing myself into my music to the point I started a recording studio to distract me from my feelings.

Today I know what love looks like. When I wake up in the morning I count the minutes until I can see Christina. When I go to bed I feel guilty I can’t spend just a few more precious moments with her. Sometimes I lie in bed texting her as I fall asleep. When I look in her eyes I look into her soul. I see the counterpart to my own soul. She is beyond a shadow of a doubt the very reason I try to be a better person. Neither of us are using one another. We have a mutually beneficial relationship that stems from wanting what is best for the other person. I cry when she is sad. I smile when she is glad. I celebrate her victories and I share every moment with her I can make the time to during the day.

It took me 39 years before I knew what true love felt like. Now that I have it I can move on beyond my past. I can forget about the woman I almost married. I can look towards the future with my new partner, the most wonderful girlfriend I have ever had. I can live a full life knowing I found my soulmate. I couldn’t say that before.

A rebranding is in order. It was inevitable. This website has already gone through a number of changes over the years. It started as a comic book fan site. Then it was a horror and comic book blog. Then just a general purpose blog for my random thoughts. Now it’s time I make some changes again.

First things first, this website is not going to change. I worked hard pouring my soul into my writing here. I wanna keep it loose and open ended. This is my website. It bears my name. That being said some things are going to change.

I have made several different YouTube channels over the years. I have gone through many phases with multiple changes to content formatting. I have struggled to find a consistent brand during that time. I have created vlogs. I have made toy videos. I have done movie reviews and podcasts as well as a news cast I tried to keep up once a month. None of these projects worked because my heart wasn’t in it.

I can’t decide if I wanna make a brand new channel or rebrand the content on my main channel. I am kinda struggling with how to move forward. I haven’t been inspired to make a video in months. I chose the simple vlog format because it was easy to produce content but I forgot the one short coming of the format, topics. I have trouble coming up with topics. I didn’t want it to become a channel that mirrored the content I previously produced under my old channel, The Spiders Lair. so I decided to forgo talking about horror, comics, movies and video games on purpose. I didn’t want it to be a trans culture channel either. So I left it alone while I spent time with my thoughts.

Here is what I discovered. Everything keeps going back to horror. I like talking about horror movies. I enjoy watching horror movies more than any other type of movie. Out of the thousand plus DVDs I own 2/3rds of them are horror. I want to talk about horror only. I want to watch movies and then share my thoughts on that movie. I don’t want to edit videos. I don’t want high production values just a simple horror vlog. But I wanna make sure horror is the central focus of the channel moving forward.

Here is what I am trying to decide. Should I kill all previous content and replace it with a horror vlog, or should I start a new channel exclusively for talking horror? I don’t wanna start over again with zero subscribers. It is so difficult to get people to subscribe as it is. However I don’t want to close the door on open-ended content either. Someday I might get the whim to go back and make more toy videos just for fun. I don’t wanna confuse my audience by cluttering my horror channel up with non horror content. If I rebrand I need to decide if I go all in or create a new channel. This is what I am struggling with today. If I make a horror exclusive channel I need to come up with a brand name. Something I can market. A part of me wants to bring back The Spiders Lair. A part of me wants to return to playing the character The Retro Witch. Still a small part of me wants to try and think of something different. Something original. I don’t like going back to the well so to speak.

I can’t make this decision over night. I don’t wanna make any drastic changes right away. I don’t want to be impulsive. I would like to take my time and think this through. I don’t do that enough thanks largely in part to being bipolar. However I do want to make a change soon because I am itching to get back to making new content again. So if I rebrand my channel I wanna figure out what to do with my old content. Otherwise I need to figure out a name for my new channel. Something that stands out. In the mean time I need to get additional input from other sources before I make a decision. The inevitable podcast will follow most likely once I make a decision.

I have always struggled with self esteem. I have such low esteem of myself I often feel invisible. Nothing makes me feel more worthless than when there is a pop culture thing I am supposed to like I just can’t stand. Especially when all my like-minded peers are into the thing I don’t like.

I have always loved Star Wars. You are supposed to like Star Wars. You are supposed to like a lot of things that I do like for instance The Terminator franchise, Ghostbusters, the MCU, Lord of the Rings, the Matrix and even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I also enjoy a lot of things you are supposed to hate such as Star Wars the Phantom Menace, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Harry Potter, and The Twilight Saga. When it comes to music my tastes are quite popular. I like pop music. I like the MOST popular music mostly Lada Gaga, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears and the like. The more popular something is the more I tend to dig it.

Except for a few certain things. There are things I am supposed to like I just can’t stand. For example the Halloween movies. Listen I am a big time horror fan. I rarely come across a horror movie I don’t like. I even enjoy the schlocky b movies. But despite my best efforts I can’t get into Halloween at all. I have tried. I’ve seen nearly every film in the franchise and the more I try to force myself to like them the more they push me away.

This causes feelings of alienation. Inadequacy. Low Self Esteem. And self loathing. I feel worthless. Like a true horror fan would LOVE Halloween. Does hating it make me less of a fan of the genre I proclaim to love so much? Especially since the slasher sub-genre is my personal favorite. Hell my favorite movie of all time is a slasher. So it’s not like I am a stranger to the genres tropes. I get it. I am all for the kills. Yet as hard as I try I can’t bring myself to like Halloween.

There are other things you are supposed to like I can’t stand such as Star Trek, the band Queen, Legend of Zelda and most problematically for me is the Marvel movies. While I do enjoy most of the Avengers mainline films, I feel the market is over saturated with MCU and the vast majority of it turns me off.

I can’t help but wonder if there is something wrong with me personally. I know you are allowed to dislike certain things, I get it. But when it’s something every single one of your peers loves, and you typically have similar taste otherwise, it makes me feel like a mutant or an alien only pretending to be human. I want to like the same things my friends like. I want to enjoy the movies I am supposed to enjoy. It makes me question what is wrong with me? Sometimes I think nothing. I am allowed to be different. And there it is. I just feel different. As bad as that makes me feel sometimes. I suppose that’s okay but it doesn’t change the fact I feel like a poser.

Maybe I am not as much of a horror fan as I proclaim to be? Or maybe I am looking at it all wrong? Maybe the way you enjoy the films is to forget about the non existent story and just enjoy the kills? I do that with so many other slasher movies why can’t I do that with the mother of them all? The original slasher that started the trend? I guess I have some thinking to do. Maybe I am being too harsh a critic. Maybe I set my standards too high for something that is meant to be schlock? All I know is I am tired of wanting to fit in but being unable to do so properly.

I recently got to become an aunt. It happened when my adopted sister adopted a teenager of her own. This new child has become the newest member of my family and I couldn’t be happier I found her.

I’ve had a rocky relationship with my blood family. Most of them are ultra conservative Evangelical Christians so they tend to not want anything to do with me. Thus I turned to my found family. I moved in with my adopted sister Robin two years ago last month. I lived with her and her wife for 6 months before they helped me get into a place of my own. I can honestly say they have been better for me than my own blood family.

There is a catch. Keyohnee, my new niece, lives in Quebec, Canada. Right now Robin is on a quest to fetch her and bring her back to the States where she belongs. Following a series of events she finally has a firm date when she should arrive. I couldn’t be more excited to meet her. During the few weeks since I found out about her we have bonded quite a bit. We mostly chat on Facebook Messenger but we also call each other on Discord at least once a day when we can.

I have grown attached to this girl and I am anxious to have her be a bigger part of my life. As a fully grown trans woman I understand the trials she will face living in Texas first hand. I plan on being a part of her support network. I will revel in the right to get to protect her from this world as best as I can.

When you are queer your found family becomes more important to you than blood relatives who stabbed you in the back ever were. I am willing to admit I already have love in my heart for this dear child. I can’t wait to get to know her in person. Only a few short days away and I get my wish. A niece I get to bond with on a regular basis. I am too excited for words. I want the whole world to know she is my family and I intend to see to it she is treated well.

I have been working hard to rebuild my relationship with the Goddess Brigid after we had a falling out last year. I don’t wanna go into the details but she forgave me and she has been testing my faith in her trying to build up trust. The other night she earned my trust.

I was watching WWE Monday Night Raw with my niece and girlfriend. I am working seven days in a row this week so I been beat ass tired every night. I decided to throw in the towel and go to bed early. Except I forgot to take my evening pills which includes a dream suppressant. I immediately fell a sleep and began dreaming I was in the ring with the big wrestlers and it felt real every blow to my body. It was excruciating so I forced myself awake. As a life long fan of the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise I have trained myself in the art of lucid dreaming. I can wake up on  a moments notice.

Once I was awake I tested my faith in Brigid by calling out to her. I asked her to protect me from evil. I also asked her to give me good dreams. She reminded me I forgot to take my dream pills but I insisted I was trusting her completely so I didn’t take my pill. She immediately responded by rewarding me with an out of body experience. She lifted me up out of my body and I hovered above myself for a few moments. Then she let me fly around the room experiencing the euphoria of the moment before I forced myself awake. When pressed why I woke up I told her I was still scared. She comforted me and I spent the rest of the night having wonderful dreams. Peaceful dreams. Comforting dreams.

Needless to say between this and a few more answered prayers she has earned my trust. I am now confident in saying she is my Mother Goddess and I trust her with my life.

This wasn’t my first ever out of body experience but it was the most euphoric one. It also came with the knowledge and comfort knowing my Goddess was watching over me. Tonight I will sleep well knowing she is still watching me. Only, no offense to her, I will be taking my pills tonight just in case.

My time in the news business taught me a lot. It showed me that newspapers have way more power than people often give them credit for. It showed me the ugly side of people in local politics. It showed me corrupt cops were the norm not the exception. Above all it taught me capitalism rules this country.

I started my news journey in an unconventional way. My first job was working as a photographer for a wedding company. I got lucky the person training me to become a videographer worked as a production assistant for the local TV station. It turned out there was an opening for video editor. He gave me the personal cell phone number of the news director. I got an interview and landed the job on the spot.

I worked as a news video editor for three months before I was promoted to Assistant Producer. From there I worked part time as a camera operator and part time as a video editor. Meanwhile I continued to photograph weddings on the weekends. I saw a lot of cool stuff as an AP.

That job ended badly. One of the news reporters accused me of sexually harassing her. Considering I was deeply in the closet trans and completely asexual this was impossible. But they told me I had to apologize for whatever my actions were to keep my job. I left that job and moved to Texas.

Once I arrived in Texas I immediately landed a job at another local TV station. This time as a Master Control Operator. I did this for all of three days before I got fired for cutting the feed during a national commercial break. Oops. I wasn’t out of the business for long. Turns out the local newspaper in the town where I lived had an opening for Staff Writer. I applied and was given an interview. I was hired on the spot for “wearing a suit and tie” to the interview, something apparently nobody else bothered to do. I worked as a news reporter for that company for almost three whole years. I left to pursue greater opportunities elsewhere.

Once I left the small town paper I landed a job at the local daily community newspaper. This was the big boys in town. We had a newsroom with 30 people in it, much greater than the two at my last newspaper. I worked there first as an unassigned reporter. I worked whatever beat they had need for me. Then I got my first beat, education reporter. I did that for three months and won an award for my work.

Then I was given the Government Reporter beat. In the news industry that is one of the top beats to get. It requires getting intimately familiar with top brass in all walks of life. I walked the red carpet, spent time in the VIP room, was smoozed by a local oil tycoon and the list goes on. I took over editor of the website and became digital producer for the newspaper. I ran the website and our sports podcast along side my day-to-day duties as a Government reporter. I left that job for greener pastures.

I made it back into TV after several years of being at newspapers. I was hired as a News Producer/Editor for a local TV station. This was near management level work. I say near because chain of command is fuzzy in a newsroom but I was above the reporters in the chain. I worked there for three months then finally started my transition into a female from living a lie as a male-presenting individual. Needless to say I lost my job due to things I am not legally allowed to discuss after I signed an NDA. That was my last full time paid gig in the news industry.

I ran a lot of stories during my seven year tenure in the business. I took a lot of photographs. I filmed a lot of events. I reported on big and small stories, some even becoming national stories. I served my community well. I won awards and accolades for my work. To this day I am proud of my time working in the news media industry.

Despite all that I will never go back. The most I would consider would be staff writer at a small town newspaper so long as it paid a living wage. I am perfectly happy with how my life has turned out thus far. I got to experience a lot of good times in the news business. But I also saw the dark side of it all. Look for future articles chronicling the shady stuff I had to experience and the trauma-inducing stories I was required to cover. For now know this. I was a damn good reporter. I have sources to back that up. I have top-notch references. I choose to stay out of the news business because I found peace elsewhere.

I used to shy away from telling people I had a disability. Partly because I saw how my friends who are disabled were treated by those around them. Yet here I am coming to terms with my own disabilities. It’s not an easy subject to discuss. People think you are lesser than they are because you struggle with things they take for granted.

I have multiple disabilities. For starters I permanently broke my foot in an accident I don’t talk about. I walk with a cane. I have a handicap permit. I cannot do any job that requires me to be on my feet for the majority of the day. This limits the jobs I can pursue. It is a physical disability I had to come to grips with. I constantly have people asking me why I didn’t just get the surgery to fix my foot or why I don’t do physical therapy. Put it simply money. I couldn’t afford the surgery and I can’t afford physical therapy. So I walk with a cane. I limp with a cane rather, I don’t walk anywhere. I can’t I physically cannot run. I cannot stride. I cannot skip. I cannot do jumping jacks. I am severely limited in what I can do as a result.

I also have a slew of mental health disabilities. First up is borderline personality disorder. My emotions get the best of me. If I lose my temper I am blinded by anger and literally nothing can calm me down. This has landed me in trouble with the law on multiple occasions. It is something I cannot control. I take mood stabilizers but they can only do so much. This limits the stressful situations I can be in and still function.

I was a news reporter for several years with this disability. I cannot tell you how many times I had to sit in an office while upper management literally yelled at me for mistakes I made I couldn’t control. Things that prevented me from climbing the ladder too high.

I also have bipolar disorder. I can’t begin to tell you how debilitating it is to not have the focus to function in society. This keeps me from performing high stress and mentally demanding jobs. This is another reason why I failed as a news reporter. I struggled to control my mania and then depression would make me unable to write well. I could just shut down. There are days where I literally cannot get out of bed because depression is crippling to me.

I also have severe social anxiety disorder. If I am in a space of any size that has more than two people, myself and one other person, I shut down. I can’t speak. I can’t breath. I run the risk of having an anxiety attack which I have had multiple times while at work. I can’t tell you how many jobs I lost because of a panic attack. There is nothing I can do for this one. There is no treatment. There is no magic pill that makes me able to talk to people. I can handle one-on-one conversations with people I trust but add a third person and my brain goes into panic mode.

I am trans gender. While this isn’t a disability in it’s own right it is a limiting factor in my ability to find gainful employment. I struggle with discrimination all the time. While it isn’t a tried and true disability per se it has caused me to lose employment. I was told by one employer, in Texas, they were legally allowed to discriminate against me because I was trans. I couldn’t fight back because they had religious exemption.

I have a medical condition that limits my ability to function. My stomach muscles do not work. If I eat too much solid food, no matter what it is, I throw up. Sometimes I puke even on an empty stomach. I get dry heaves literally every single day. I have bathroom issues as a result too. I am technically supposed to be on a 100 percent liquid diet but I can’t survive like that so I run the risk of vomiting every single time I eat anything.

I have physical, mental health and medical disabilities. I struggle with day to day things people take for granted. Yet I constantly have to face people telling me to just get over it, buck up, try harder, etc., when I literally cannot. I do the best I can with what I have to work with but truth be told I have severe limits to what I can do. And it sucks the way I get treated as a result.

Some dismiss my disabilities. They say so and so has x and they do just fine. They forget each person is different. While it is possible to over come some of my individual disabilities, it is extremely difficult with everything I face. Yet I do. I fight on. I do not lean on my disabilities even though I suffer. I do try harder. I do buck up. I do push myself beyond my limits until I break down. Because our society is ableist and if you have any sort of deviation from the norm you are treated like an outcast of society. A worthless human incapable of making a “real contribution” to society. A drain on resources. This is why I struggle.

I wish I could tell you it is for my love of cars. While I do appreciate cars in all their glory, I am not a self described car person if that makes sense. But I love Hot Wheels.

It started out of necessity. I have a toy buying addiction. When I was living in a trailer house, that I owned at the time, I worked for a TV station and was making good enough money to buy toys all the time. But then payday would go and the broke would set it. I still had an itch to buy more toys. One day while I was in the dollar store I saw a display of Matchbox cars. I bought a 5 pack to have a few. It was only $5 so it scratched the itch but didn’t break the bank.

Pretty soon I found myself buying more Matchbox cars every payday. I would use them to fill out the toy lines I was collecting. I had a lot of action figures, Barbie stuff and Care Bears. But I needed more. So I kept buying Matchbox cars. Pretty soon I had bought the entire line. There were no new cars for me to buy. That is when I switched to Hot Wheels. They are made by the same company, are same size, same scale and similar materials. I figured why not?

It didn’t take long for me to build up a massive Hot Wheels collection. I set a goal of filling a single tote with nothing but die cast cars. Now I stick mostly to Hot Wheels and Matchbox but I occasionally stray into others like John Deere or Punch Buggy lines from time to time. They have to be the same scale as Matchbox cars though. I don’t buy any other scale.

What I like about die cast cars is they are cheap. I can satisfy my toy fix and only have to spend a buck and change on a toy car. It has been a godsend for managing my addiction. I don’t always have $15-$20 to buy a new action figure and my Barbie collecting is on hold until I can afford that doll house. Or find a Ken doll with clothes lol.

I could spend time talking about my personal history with automobiles but I’d rather focus on the toys instead. I like the designs. They put a lot of effort into these inexpensive little pieces of die cast and plastic cars. I just really enjoy getting a brand new car I don’t already own. I do have a few duplicates as I buy so many it is bound to happen but by and large I try to stick to originals. This can be a challenge as they only produce so many new cars a year. My collection is still growing despite the financial limitations of my current situation. But it’s okay. I found it is satisfying to pick up a new Hot Wheels or Matchbox car from time to time.

There are only a handful of horror movies so terrifying I can’t bring myself to rewatch them no matter how much I might try to talk myself into it. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the most terrifying films I have ever seen. While not too scary to not rewatch at all, it is gruesome enough to savor my viewings so not to become spoiled. It is surely a classic.

That is not the case with the Netflix sequel. This movie demanded immediate reviewings from myself upon completion of the first watch. I watched it four times in one day. I am likely to enter it into my horror canon. But does it hold up or was it just the shock of it all?

The plot is paper thin as to be expected. Hell there is barely a plot to the original as it is. These movies are not known for their award-winning story-telling but for their shock value. It’s all about the gore baby. We all know the original kept the kills to a minimalist approach. Many were shown off camera only implied. The gore was left up to the imagination of the viewer. Its immediate sequels threw caution to the wind and doubled down on the gore. The Netflix film carries on that tradition of delivering the gore fans have come to expect.

I was trying to keep a running tally of the body count. By the time Leatherface gets to the bus I lost count. That is exactly what I wanted from this movie. My first viewing I expected the silent girl with the gunshot wound would be the final girl. I didn’t expect the magnitude of the violence this film would show me. I was quite impressed. If shock value is the bread and butter of these films then this one is a 4 course meal.

The acting is sub par as expected. The characters barely convey the emotions they are meant to demonstrate. You kind of have to fill in the blanks with your imagination. They demonstrate terror well enough but you could see multiple examples of the actors trying not to laugh on camera. I wouldn’t expect anyone finding themselves with a role in this film to take it too seriously. But who cares about acting as long as the girls can scream am I right?

The movie is a decent enough flick. I found myself wanting to see it over and over again to study it. I was enamored by the kills. It’s rare for a slasher to go all out with the kills. Often you get through the main course of teenagers and leave the adults alone. This was a rare example where everybody was fair game.

The movie leaves me with plenty of questions none of which I will examine here. What I will say is that I was quite entertained with this movie. It was well enough acted for a slasher film. The plot at least made enough sense to justify the bloodbath. The kills were the main draw and they certainly delivered on the goods here. All in all if you are looking for a bloodbath this is your movie. If you are looking for a love letter to the original film this might leave you wanting more. While it does a good enough job hearkening back to the classic original it does stand mostly on its own. It draws inspiration from the original but it leaves its own mark on the horror ethos.

I wanna say this was the most fun watching a horror movie I have had all year. After the disappointing affair that was the Hulu Hellraiser debacle I went into this hesitant to find anything I would enjoy out of it. Instead I discovered an instant classic I will revisit quite regularly. In fact I imaging this will become my regular fix for all things Texas Chainsaw.

4 out of 5 stars.