DirecTV Review: Leatherface (2017)

"Leatherface is more of a road revenge flick than it is an origin story."

(aka The Road to Mexico.)

Release Date: September 21st.

Country: USA.

Rating: R.

Written by: Seth M. Sherwood.

Directed by: Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury.

Starring: Stephen Dorff, Vanessa Grasse, Lili Taylor, Finn Jones, Sam Strike, and Jessica Madsen.



I'm going to come right out and say it: I love the 2003 TCM remake, and its follow-up, TCM: The Beginning, nearly as much as I love the original. In a vastly different way, of course, but I thought they were good flicks.



About this prequel/re-imagining, I'll say that while it's plagued with issues, that it's still better than every other film in the franchise, save for maybe TCM 2, which is debatable.



Did I mention that this movie has issues though? Because it does.

It's 1955, and Verna Sawyer and her brood of inbred whelps live a happy life, killing people for fun. When the Sawyer kids lure a dumb-ass girl (who should have stayed in the car) to her death, they invoke the rage of her father, the sociopathic Texas Ranger, Hal Hartman, who has them committed to a boys home for the criminally insane.

WHY WOULD YOU FOLLOW THAT INTO THE WOODS?!?

Ten years later, little Jed (I thought his name was Bubba) Sawyer is all grown up and living in the asylum where he was left to rot, just waiting around to become Leatherface. Missing her son, Verna visits the asylum, where she sparks a riot in which he and some other teen nutbags escape, taking a sweet and innocent nurse hostage in the process.

CAN YOU EVEN TELL WHICH ONE OF THEM IS NOT INSANE?

As they make a run for Mexico, Hartman and his lawdogs give pursuit. What follows next is a bloody cacophony of twisted death, very little of which involves a chainsaw.



Ultra-violent road revenge antics ensue.

YEAH, THAT'S PRETTY MUCH HOW EVERY SOUTHERN LAWMAN LOOKED BACK IN THE 60'S.

Leatherface serves as more of a great series of gory set pieces than it does a prequel to one of the most beloved Horror franchises of all time. It's bloody and nasty, which should delight the gorehounds out there, but a lot of those bits feel like they were included just to make the movie seem over-the-top, rather than serving the central narrative.



Most of the story is told from the perspective of the bloodthirsty teenagers who escape from the asylum with Leatherface, instead of, you know, making the story about him, which makes it feel almost pointless to call this a Texas Chainsaw flick. Maybe they got caught up in the "twist" that the movie lays on us towards the end, and they thought that building everything around that would somehow make it better?



We already know the Sawyer clan is a bunch of deranged, backwoods cannibals, and that Leatherface is the half-wit muscle of the brood, so why try and change it up and make him something altogether different? By the time it started to feel like a TCM flick at the end, I thought to myself "This is where they should have started things, not ended them.



That said, the movie works on some levels. It delivers on gore, it's got plenty of twisted action throughout, and the cast did a solid job in their roles; Stephen Dorff rocked it as the Texas Ranger who is as deranged as the inmates he's pursuing.

THERE'S NO JOY IN THIS MAN'S LIFE. NONE.

The twist... I won't give it away (you'll figure it out towards the end), but I will say that I didn't dig it. Aside from it being there to seem clever, it just didn't play well for me.

SHE APPARENTLY DIDN'T LIKE IT EITHER.

How sick do you have to be to have a threesome with a corpse?!?

"DRINK UP AND PRETEND THIS SHIT ISN'T HAPPENING."

If nothing else, Leatherface delivers on the blood and gore, which is pretty much a staple of any Maury & Bustillo film. The headshot in the diner, the threesome, the Texas Tauntaun scene... this one gets plenty nasty.

WELL, IT WAS A GOOD RUN WHILE IT LASTED...

Jessica Madsen bares all, and even french kisses a rotting corpse...

...AND THAT'S WHY SHE HAS TO GO TO DIRTY WHORE JAIL!

The bottom line is this: Leatherface is an uneven addition to the TCM universe. It's a gorfest that loosely gives us some background on the titular character's childhood, but plays it too casual with the plot to be considered a definitive Leatherface origin story. I mean, it is an origin story, but only at the beginning and end really.



If you're looking for a bloody entry in the story of the Sawyer clan, and can overlook the film's shortcomings, then Leatherface is definitely one to rent when it hits VOD outlets later in the month.



C+



Leatherface is streaming on DirecTV now, and will hit VOD outlets and limited theaters on October 20th.

The girls in Texas sure are purty!

10 Horror Eyes for October!

Is there a Horror movie out there that doesn't offer at least one close-up of someone's eyes during its runtime? We sure hope not, because we just can't get enough of them. They're windows to the soul, you know.



So once again, let us celebrate the ocular images that add that extra tension and emotion to our favorite films. *We mean that as a generality, as these are not necessarily our favorite films. Then again, they're not necessarily not our favorite films either. Could go either way.



Enjoy.



*Picture Links go to Amazon, so that you can grab a copy of the movie or watch their trailers, or IMDB, if they aren't available yet. Or you could just stare at them and try to figure out which movies they came from on your own, until you go insane. Your choice.

What's New on VOD This Week? (9/26-9/29)

September gives us one more solid week on the VOD front as it gives way to October, with a handful of movies that could all be entertaining in their own special ways.



*Be sure to click the pics to rent the movies, or watch their trailers. Or both. Or neither. It really depends on your mood, now doesn't it?



*If you aren't already a member, you should really give Amazon Prime a shot, especially if you order movies on the regular like we do, because the free two-day shipping pays for itself after around 10 orders. Check it out for free HERE.

The Blu-ray & DVD Releases of October!

We've updated our Blu-ray & DVD Release Dates List page to reflect everything that's hitting Blu-ray & DVD between now and the end of November, and below you'll find a small sampling of what the next two months worth of physical media releases have to offer us. And what a huge month is coming our way!



Of course, Release Dates can change at any time, so take them with a grain of salt...



You can click any of the pics below to order yourself some movies, or click the banner above to check out our full Blu-ray & DVD Release Dates List.



*If you aren't already a member, you should really give Amazon Prime a shot, especially if you order movies on the regular like we do, because the free two-day shipping pays for itself after around 10 orders. Check it out for free HERE.