Leatherface (2017)
A teenage Leatherface escapes from a mental hospital
with three other inmates, kidnapping a young nurse and taking her on a
road trip from hell while being pursued by an equally deranged lawman
out for revenge.
Writer:
Seth M. Sherwood (screenplay)Stars:
Country:
USALanguage:
EnglishRelease Date:
20 October 2017 (USA) See more »Also Known As:
Texas Chainsaw 4 See more »Filming Locations:
BulgariaCompany Credits
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Color:
Color
French directing duo Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury craft a
respectful origin story for the long-running 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre'
horror franchise.
A landmark in hillbilly horror, the late Tobe Hooper’s grungy 1974 slasher classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has so far spawned seven sequels and reboots of variable quality. Erasing the traces of previous origin stories, Leatherface pitches
itself as a canonical prequel to the original. It is certainly a
superior film to its most recent franchise predecessor, Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013),
which earned damning reviews but still turned a healthy profit. Hooper
died just as this latest installment received its world premiere at
FrightFest in London last weekend. He is credited as executive producer
here, an unintended but respectable epitaph to his half-century career
in movies.
French directing duo Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, best known for their terrific 2007 debut Inside, deliver a superior pulp shocker with their English-language debut. Leatherface was
shot in low-cost Bulgaria with a mostly European cast and crew, but it
feels more like a stylish indie production than a cheap grindcore
knockoff. The gory carnage is sparingly but vividly staged, the
suspense-driven plot twisty enough to tax the brain. Seasoned U.S.
players Lili Taylor and Stephen Dorff also add modest marquee value. The
film makes its North American debut via DirecTV on Sept. 21 ahead of
simultaneous VOD and limited theatrical release on Oct. 20.
At the ramshackle Sawyer family farm in rural Texas in 1955, a young
Jed Sawyer (Boris Kabakchiev) proves squeamish when his demonic mother
Verna (Taylor) tries to initiate him into the clan tradition of chainsaw
slaughter. But the boy later plays his dutiful role in a macabre
roadside ambush, donning animal skins to lure a passing couple into a
grisly trap. Enraged after his daughter is murdered by the Sawyers,
vengeful sheriff Hal Hinton (Dorff) has insufficient evidence to convict
Verna, but he punishes her anyway by removing Jed to a state mental
infirmary, Gorman House.
Ten years later, new nurse Lizzy White (Vanessa Grasse) begins work
at Gorman House just as Verna Sawyer fails in her latest legal bid to
get Jed released. Her grown-up son is now a stranger to her, his name
changed for his own protection, a shamelessly dramatic contrivance
designed to keep viewers guessing for the next hour. Mission
accomplished.
The hospital is a gothic purgatory where insubordinate inmates suffer
a sadistic regime of electroconvulsive therapy. When a bloody riot
breaks out, Lizzy is taken hostage and forced to go on the run with a
gang of escapees: the childlike Bud (Sam Coleman), the sweetly
protective Jackson (Sam Strike) and the bloodthirsty psycho-lovers Ike
(James Bloor) and Clarice (Jessica Madsen). There are some fairly overt
movie homages here, from Badlands to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to Natural Born Killers.
With Dorff’s sweaty, unshaven, increasingly trigger-happy lawman in
bloodthirsty pursuit, the runaways leave a trail of bodies on their
doomed rush to the Mexican border. A tense meal break at a roadside
diner becomes a brain-exploding shotgun massacre. An overnight shelter
in a remote trailer ends in a necrophiliac sex orgy — but hey, we’ve all
had crazy nights like that, right? Jed’s identity is not difficult to
guess, especially once the gang begins dying off in gunfights and car
chases. But such are the formulaic thrills of genre movies, serving up a
checklist of guilty pleasures with Pavlovian predictability.
Leatherface is not a wildly original reboot, it simply
brings a breath of refreshingly foul air to a moribund franchise.
Commendably, it also manages to remain gripping while avoiding the
self-referential irony and sexualized torture-porn that has dominated
much of horror over the last two decades. The climactic
chainsaw-wielding bloodbath will surprise nobody, but it has a
satisfying splatterpunk energy that Tobe Hooper himself would surely
have relished.
7/10 genre
6/10 overall
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
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