Review of Leatherface (2017) by Cory T — 01 Oct 2017

Leatherface' is a moderately rip-roaring, pell-mell prequel which is also the eighth installment in the 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' franchise and the first to be a mystery (albeit thinly veiled one) around who at the Gorman House Youth Reformatory will be the slaughterhouse butcher.

The Platinum Dunes remake was an execrable nadir for the venerable horror series because it demystified the titular cannibalistic character with a soap-opera backstory of a bullied childhood and glimpses underneath his flayed-flesh mask.

Therefore, it is salubrious to be apprehensive of another backwards purview into the inbred juggernaut's lurid history. Thankfully, this flick wallows in its retreat back to the low-budget roots (after a flirtation with an egregious 3D treatment in the previous film) and is exponentially more ensorcelling because of its extramural freshness to a dropsical 'Bonnie & Clyde' spree.

Notwithstanding, the mania of the Sawyer clan's ocular close-ups (the mongoloid overacting by Leatherface's pubescent brother in a Confederate hat is also a misstep) is nowhere near as mortifyingly loopy as the Tobe Hooper classic.

Much to our chagrin, French auteurs Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo quickly oscillate to a red Ford truck where a pair of nuzzling ignoramuses who thoughtlessly festinate after a youngster in a porcine-pig head.

At that point, the film backslides into the slice-and-dice territory of its contemporaries because the victims are mindless pawns for the abbatoir. Meanwhile, Stephen Dorff's deranged Texas Ranger Hal Hartman is a rehased bromide and while R.

Lee Ermey was the juicy spotlight of those Michael Bay abominations, Dorff isn't scenery-chewing enough and his role is a top-billed cameo. After a relatively insipid beginning at the farmhouse, the shift to the asylum escape (a wheelchair casualty is defenestrated forthwith) invigorates the film into vitality because of the throttling road movie chase aspect.