लेदरफेस

The only good thing about this movie is that it is exceptionally fast paced. The many bad things include

• Zero subtlety

• Generic and by the numbers story

• terrible acting

• no actual scares

• not much of a point overall.

And a chainsaw is seldom seen. Snore.

Starting out in 1954, the story follows the Sawyer family, a rural Texas band of miscreants and murderers. When a cop's daughter is killed by one of the family, the child culprit is taken away and put into a home for disturbed youth. Cut to ten years later, and new nurse Lizzy (Vanessa Grasse) is assigned to the disturbed teens ward. When the Sawyer family matriarch Verna (Lili Taylor) causes a riot during a visit, several of the inmates escape, taking Lizzy with them as a hostage. One of the escaped mental patients will grow up to become Leatherface, the mask-wearing, chainsaw-wielding terror of the earlier films, but which one will it be: volatile Ike (James Bloor), hulking idiot Bud (Sam Coleman), or troubled nice guy Jackson (Sam Strike)? Also starring Stephen Dorff as a violent cop, and Jessica Marsden as another homicidal escaped inmate.

There's a lot wrong here, from the easy-to-guess "mystery" of who will become Leatherface (a transformation that doesn't take place until the movie's final 10 minutes, so be forewarned), to the many anachronisms for a story supposedly taking place in 1964. The production values are low, and you don't have to look at the minor cast credits or crew listings to guess that this was made on the cheap in Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, to be specific). There's some bloody gore, but not presented in any original or at least humorous way. The acting is all barely serviceable, with Dorff turning in another loathsome jerk role, and Taylor seriously slumming as the killer family boss. This is the eighth movie in the series, although most of them are unrelated, with perpetual reboots, prequels or just dismissal of previous films the norm.

As a child, Jed Sawyer is taken from his murderous hillbilly family and put in the Gorman House Youth Reformatory, where he spends the next ten years with a new identity. When the prisoners revolt, a small group make a bid for freedom with pretty nurse Lizzy (Vanessa Grasse) and fellow inmate Jackson as their hostages.

Tobe Hooper's original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre ranks as one of the scariest films ever made, its iconic killer Leatherface its most frightening creation. With this latest film in the series, they've gone and done what Rob Zombie did with his godawful Halloween remake: give the killer a back story. In humanising the character, they have lessened his effectiveness as an object of fear. Once an emotionless, uncontrollable monster, impossible to reason with, he is now someone we can identify with and feel a level of pity for. It didn't work for Michael Myers and it doesn't work here.

The origins story-line also makes much of the film seem frustratingly unlike a Texas Chainsaw movie, at times even reminding me of a Tarantino flick (the escape from Gorman House made me think of Natural Born Killers while the BBQ stop massacre was redolent of both NBK and Pulp Fiction). Only in the film's closing moments do things actually feel like they belong to the franchise, with Lizzy trying to escape the Sawyer's charnel house, a chainsaw wielding Jed (soon to become Leatherface) hot on her heels. Directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury don't hold back on the brutality and blood, but even so, I can imagine many fans of the series being disappointed with the level of splatter (too much for some, not enough for others).

5.5 out of 10, rounded down to 5 for that really dumb scene in which three people (including one really fat guy) hide from the law by climbing inside the festering carcass of a steer. A really big steer. Also, minus half a point for the unbelievable necro sex scene. And another half point subtracted for Jed's sudden (and also completely unbelievable) transformation from rational human being to hulking homicidal maniac.

Prequel to the legendary Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this is as much a violent road movie as it is a horror. I heard many negative things about the film beforehand but as always I watched it with an open mind. On the negative side I found this film to be somewhat unconvincing and unnecessary. Obviously it was made to make money but it really does not add anything worthy to the TCM series. On the plus side it was technically pretty good, having seen a few of the director' previous films it lived up to expectations. Acting and pace is good plus there is a lot of blood & violence to satisfy most gorehounds. I would certainly watch it again.

This movie in itself is not exactly bad. It looks alright, has some OK gore, decent acting for the most part, some slightly interesting characters. It doesn't suck. But as a origin story to one of horror's biggest icons? Eeeh, yeah. It's not great.

Actually, right off the bat the biggest problem with this movie strikes me. When you're making an origin story to such a famous character, you should make sure that the story you make up and make into a movie is really awesome. Unfortunately, it's not. We see Leatherface's family and stuff, and it's just meh. The opening scene is just not very interesting. What follows though, isn't bad. They have some kind of story to tell here, not relying too much on TCM- lore, and I thought it was somewhat entertaining.

You wouldn't have to cut a lot here to make this movie totally unrecognizable as a Leaterface origin-story, though. That's a shame. And it's also pretty tame, I'm sorry to say. Actually really tame. Like I said initially, the origin story to such a gruesome character should really be a lot more horrific, gruesome and ghastly. It's not. It's pretty watered down. I think the die hard fans of Leatherface will be disappointed with this. But who knows, I may be wrong.