Leatherface (2017)

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

I've seen complaints that this film contributes very little to the origins of Leatherface, which is true. However if you go into this without that expectation you have a very solid slasher flick, which is surprisingly well shot might I add. A fun movie intended for lovers of the genre.

In case you are not aware from the title of the film, this is the origin of Leatherface, the main character from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The film, itself, looks like it tried too hard to copy the Rob Zombie formula for horror film-making, particularly his style of extending the back-story of Michael Myers, as well as obviously taking a lot of inspiration from Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses and Devil's Rejects. That is kind of ironic since Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses and Devil's Rejects were at least partially inspired by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In any event, as a horror fan, when I heard that there was going to be a Leatherface origin film, I was very excited! Unfortunately, that excitement quickly dissipated when I finally watched the film. It starts out slow, but OK, it seems like they wanted to work their way into developing the characters a bit. However, they just sort of gave up and it just fell apart very quickly. The writing was awful, the dialogue was terrible. At times it felt like I was watching a student film-making project. As far as horror goes, it had its moment but nothing "jump out of your seat" scary; mostly just ho-hum although a couple scenes were very gory still weren't really satisfying. The gory parts just kind of happen and then you're moved along. Lili Taylor was great but she was held down by poor production. If this film had a bigger budget and more time allotted to development, I think it could have been great. Sadly that was not to be the case and so now you just have another entry in the Texas Chainsaw franchise which will be forgotten just as quickly as it was released.

If I could rate this movie into the minus numbers I would because I've never seen a more ridiculous film that is driven entirely by the level of violence it depicts for the sheer pleasure of it. Its films like this that tend to show how bankrupt/devoid Hollywood has become of ideas to make a film instead resorting to feeding off a franchise that goes back to 1973 and has had countless sequels since then. In this case what you have are a pack of escape psychotics running around killing indiscriminately and a sheriff out for revenge who isn't much better. What lacks for a storyline is effectively made up with the gorefest deployed here, including a graphic sex scene involving a dead person. Its almost as if there was no desire to create characters here of even the most basic level of complexity to keep the viewer interested and that is sad because the notion of a prequel to this story could've been done in a far more compelling way without the reliance on depicting various methods of killing to make up for it. What I will say is that this isn't a film for anyone under the age of 18, unlike previous iterations as even I had a hard time sitting through it. I like the horror film genre but those movies that depict varying degrees of violence instead of true suspense just aren't worth the price of admission.

Love these slice and dice movies,this one was really sick