One of the most iconic independent horror films ever made besides John Carpenter’s Halloween is the 1974 Tobe Hooper classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The film featured one of the most iconic characters in the chainsaw wielding Leatherface who was based off of real life serial killer Ed Gein. In total there were four original films with three remakes that followed in the 2000’s. None of those however have ever taken the approach that today’s film has done in the brand new 2017 film Leatherface. Hal Hartman (Stephen Dorff) is the local sheriff who has a thing with locking up troubled kids in a mental institute and there is a reason for that. After his daughter died at the hands of the infamous Sawyer family, he made it a mission. Ten years later, he is back on the manhunt after four inmates escape the institution with a nurse as their hostage. Oh and Jed (Leatherface) maybe one of the escaped inmates. The film stars Lili Taylor (The Conjuring) as Verna Sawyer, Sam Strike (EastEnders) as Jackson, Vanessa Grasse (Roboshark) as Lizzie, Finn Jones (Iron Fist) as Deputy Sorrel, Sam Coleman (Game Of Thrones) as Bud, Jessica Madsen (Tina And Bobby) as Clarice, James Bloor (Dunkirk) as Ike, Christopher Adamson (Les Misérables) as Dr. Lang, Dimo Alexiev (Getaway) as Drayton Sawyer, and the film was directed by Alexandre Bustillo (Inside) and Julien Maury (ABCs Of Death 2).
I was reading a lot of bad reviews online about the film and usually I try not to pay attention to it because I have liked films that others have hated. This was definitely one of those films that I really liked that a lot of people did not. I do have some criticisms on the film my self, but I want to talk about what I did like. Lily Taylor was one of the things that I liked about the film as she plays the strong role of Verna Sawyer, the matriarch of the killer family. She emphasizes and conveys the feeling of power and her love for her family to the point that you believe it. Now you see Jed as a child, but when the film moves to ten years later, you have no idea who Jed is because all of their names have changed. So when the four patients escape, I think one of the characters is Jed until I am proven wrong. The one character who turns out to be him is someone I did not expect because he is actually for the most part a docile character who does fight for who he loves. Was I happy with the choice they had for an older Jed? I’m not disappointed in the choice, but from what we have seen over the years with how he is built, it didn’t live up in my opinion.
Now that is not a testimony of how bad the film is because as I said I enjoyed everything about the film from the acting (Madsen and Bloor pay real psychopaths), but there are some strange elements to the film. In this film, you have everything from a sex scene that involves some necrophilia, some intense graphic violence, death by pigs, and much more. This is definitely a film that should please any fan of horror, but as far as TCM fans are concerned, it may or may not please all of them. I was also a huge fan of the sets, the costumes, and how they were able to keep it in the past instead of today like Texas Chainsaw 3D did for us. The makeup department definitely deserves some kudos for how Madsen looked in the film (wait for that infamous scene I said above and you’ll know what I mean). I definitely also was a fan of how they set up why Leatherface looks the way he does and why he chooses to make dead skin masks. Is this one of my favorite films in the series, it’s definitely up there for me and I would definitely recommend this one to anyone. So with all of that being said, I am going to give the film an A- for a final grade. Check it out on VUDU right now as we speak.
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