Leatherface is a 2017 American horror film directed by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, written by Seth M. Sherwood, and starring Stephen Dorff, Vanessa Grasse, Sam Strike, and Lili Taylor. It is the eighth film in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise (TCM), and works as a prequel to 1974's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, explaining the origin of the series' lead character.
Following the financial success of Texas Chainsaw 3D, a sequel went into development from director John Luessenhop for a planned shoot in Louisiana, but failed to receive the greenlight to move forward. In favor of avoiding the convoluted continuity of the previous films whilst going in an unexpected direction, Seth M. Sherwood pitched Leatherface to Millennium Films as a prequel that would follow the titular character in a mentally competent state, enduring trauma that transforms him into the intellectually disabled murderer seen in the previous films. Maury and Bustillo signed on as directors after reading the screenplay, impressed with what they found to be a unique take on the long-running franchise. The film takes place in the canon established by The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Texas Chainsaw 3D, chronologically taking place before the two films.
Principal photography took place in Bulgaria in May and June 2015, with locations and sets chosen for their resemblance to the Texas terrain and as homage to the series' previous films. After being temporarily shelved by Lionsgate Films in 2016, the film was made exclusive via DirecTV on September 21, 2017, before receiving a wider release on video on demand and limited theaters, simultaneously, in North America on October 20, 2017. It received generally mixed reviews from film critics, and garnered $858,006 worldwide. Lionsgate and Millennium Films lost the rights to produce future Texas Chainsaw Massacre films because of the delay.
Video Leatherface (2017 film)
Plot
At the Sawyer homestead, a birthday party is being held by the family matriarch Verna Sawyer (Lili Taylor) for the youngest member of the Sawyer family, Jedidiah. As his birthday present and to induct him into the murderous family rituals, he is presented with a chainsaw and is urged to slaughter a man who they have accused of attempting to steal from them. Jed refuses, visibly disturbed, and the victim is instead killed by Grandpa Sawyer.
In 1955, couple Betty Hartman and Ted Hardesty are driving down a country road when they come across the seemingly wounded Jedidiah Sawyer. Betty follows him to a dilapidated barn, where she is promptly killed by the Sawyer family. Her father, Sheriff Hartman (Stephen Dorff), is called to the crime scene, where he is shocked to find his daughter deceased. Despite the efforts of Verna, Hartman quickly takes Jedidiah into custody as revenge, sending him to a mental institution known as the Gorman House Youth Reformery.
Ten years later, recently-hired nurse Elizabeth White (Vanessa Grasse) forms a bond with patients Bud and Jackson (Sam Strike) at the Gorman House. Verna arrives later that night with an injunction to allow family visitation for a now teenage Jedidiah, only to be rejected by the director of the facility, Doctor Lang (Chris Adamson). On the way out, she violates security, causing a riot during which many of the nurses and patients are killed. Elizabeth is saved by Jackson, who gets her outside to safety where the two are taken hostage by crazed escapees Ike (James Bloor) and Clarice. As they leave, they come across a bloodied Bud, having just killed Director Lang in a fit of rage, and decide to take him with them.
The group arrives at a rest stop diner shortly after changing clothes. Following an altercation with waitress Tammy, Ike and Clarice begin a murder spree within the diner in which Bud is injured and the group is forced to flee. Hartman arrives on the scene with Deputy Sorells (Finn Jones) and discovers that one of the escaped inmates is in fact Jedidiah. That night, the escapees take refuge in an abandoned mobile home where Clarice and Ike engage in sexual intercourse, revealing her scarred body and involving the corpse of the former home owner in the debauchery. While everyone is asleep, Elizabeth tries to escape but is stopped by Ike. Ike continually insults Bud, provoking him to brutalize him to death when the others aren't around. The next morning, Clarice notices Ike is missing and heads off to find him; Jackson and Elizabeth find Bud sleeping on Ike's corpse and quickly take him away.
Clarice is apprehended by Hartman and, upon disparaging both him and his dead daughter, is shot in the head as the others watch from a distance. Jackson and Bud continue on with Elizabeth in tow. As a Deputy passes, Elizabeth screams out, inadvertently leading to Bud getting shot. Bud's death sends Jackson into a rage, as he kills the Deputy and has Elizabeth drive them in the deputy's vehicle in attempt to reach safety. During their drive, the two are pursued by the deranged Hartman, who opens fire on them with one of the bullets severing Jackson's face and causing the vehicle to careen off the side of the road. Later that night, Elizabeth awakes handcuffed in Hartman's car and answers a dispatch call, alerting Sorells to her location. Sorells visits Verna and reveals to her that Hartman has Jedidiah at the old barn where Betty was killed. Verna feeds Sorells to her pigs and then gathers the family to converge on Hartman's location. At the barn, Hartman takes Elizabeth and the injured Jackson hostage, revealing that Jackson is Jedidiah Sawyer. Verna arrives and Hartman is soon incapacitated by the other Sawyers.
Back at the Sawyer home, Verna stitches the remnants of the mentally-scarred Jedidiah Sawyer's face and applies a muzzle to hold them together. She then leads him into a room where his siblings are holding Elizabeth and Hartman captive. She gifts Jedidiah with his original chainsaw and Elizabeth watches on in horror as he bisects Hartman to death. As the family celebrates, Elizabeth flees into the woods while the Sawyers give chase. She nearly escapes, only to be caught in a bear trap. Elizabeth attempts to appeal to Jedidiah's sympathy, while Verna encourages him to kill her to protect their family. Jedidiah begins to listen to Elizabeth's pleas that he is not a killer, unable to recall events prior to his injury, until she insults Verna. This causes him to decapitate her in retaliation.
The next morning, Verna burns the evidence of the prior night's events and the other Sawyers feed the remains of their victims to the pigs. In the house basement, Jedidiah crafts Hartman's and Elizabeth's flesh into a mask and dons it to a mirror as he applies lipstick. The film ends with him smashing the mirror at the sight of his reflection.
Maps Leatherface (2017 film)
Cast and characters
- Stephen Dorff as Texas Ranger Hal Hartman
- Stephen Dorff portrays Hal Hartman, an unhinged Texas Ranger that pursues Leatherface and his family for revenge for the murder of his daughter. Dorff described Leatherface as a "survival film for my character and a retribution film for Hartman, who I play. But it definitely has the moments of some sick stuff going on, and I think you realize that this family's not to be messed with. You want to stay clear away from the Sawyers and not confront them." He was given reign by the directors to develop the character the way he envisioned him from reading the script.
- Vanessa Grasse as Elizabeth "Lizzy" White
- Lizzy, played by Vanessa Grasse, is a nurse working at a mental institution that is kidnapped by patients Ike and Clarice, as they escape with Bud and Jackson.
- Sam Strike as Jedidiah Sawyer / Jackson
- Sam Strike plays Jackson, born Jedidiah Sawyer, as one of the four inmates that escape the mental institution, before ultimately becoming the eponymous Leatherface after enduring tragedies that destroy his cognitive stability. Leatherface is a mentally disabled serial killer seen throughout the TCM franchise, known for wearing masks made of human skin, and using a chainsaw and mallet as his signature weapons. Strike joined the film after reading the script, which he opined was, for a horror film, very character-driven. He felt that there needed to be a contrast between the two sides of the character, to show how a somewhat kind person can become such a killer: "It could happen to anybody. He had it in him because of his mother, but was at the mercy of his environment." Strike integrated aspects from the original film into his performance out of respect, but wanted to give his own interpretation instead of imitating what came before. To make the character's transformation more believable, Strike intentionally tried to gain physical body weight before filming: "I was trying to eat as much as I could to just feel physically capable. Chainsaws, in reality, are very heavy, especially ones that are manufactured back in the '50s and '60s. Leatherface looks like he could take your head off with a slap; I wanted to be able to feel that way." Strike believed that the character's bursts of rage throughout the film contributed to his final permanent state as a monster. He developed a "battle cry" for whenever Leatherface lost his temper. As someone who was taken from his biological family and put into foster care at an early age, Jedidiah Sawyer was written in the screenplay to have been adopted at one point by a family that wanted a little girl, forcing him to wear drag clothing as a child and foreshadowing his gender ambiguity in the 1974 Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This plot point was absent from the final cut of the film.
- Lili Taylor as Verna Sawyer
- Verna is the matriarch of the Sawyer family, a bloodline of killers from which Leatherface was spawned. According to Taylor, "What attracted me to Leatherface was really talking with the directors. When they told me they wanted to do something that was a cross between Terrence Malick, like Badlands, and The Virgin Suicides, I thought 'I'm there' because what I love is this stuff that's happening with people pushing a genre as far as they could push it and it's exciting to me." Taylor chose to concentrate more on Verna's maternal instincts for her family than her murderous ways, with the character having a denial or compartmentalization about her motherhood and the murder. The film reunites Taylor with Stephen Dorff, who both starred in the 1996 film I Shot Andy Warhol.
- Chris Adamson as Doctor Lang
- Chris Adamson's renewed interest in the horror film genre stemmed from his viewing of 1931's Frankenstein. To prepare for his role in Leatherface, he watched The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the 2003 remake, preferring the former: "It seemed to have an innocence somehow compared to some of the chopped up limb movies you get now and which I have sometimes worked on." The character Doctor Lang is the director of the mental institution from which Jedidiah Sawyer and the other inmates escape; the Gorman House Youth Reformery.
- Finn Jones as Deputy Sorells
- The fictional Deputy Sorells is Hal Hartman's fellow law enforcement officer and is played by actor Finn Jones.
- James Bloor as Ike
- The character Ike, one of the mental patients that breaks out of the asylum, is performed by James Bloor.
- Jessica Madsen as Clarice
- Clarice is one of the escaped inmates and was originally intended to be an homage to Chop Top Sawyer, a character from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, but was later developed into her own character. Seth M. Sherwood stated that "When you see her, you can see a little of that DNA in there", describing Chop Top as his favourite Sawyer. A revisionist take on Chop Top was added due to the diminished role of the family in earlier drafts of the script, but was removed when the filmmakers began to feel that she was more of a "rip-off" than a genuine tribute. The version of Clarice that appears in the final film emerged when Sherwood imagined "an image of this little girl in pigtails burning down her house with her parents inside". Out of all the performances in Leatherface, Sherwood called Jessica Madsen's the most accurate of what he envisioned while writing. Deciding that Clarice is "much more than just a pyromaniac", Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo removed scenes detailing her backstory, such as her weaponising fire for the first time, her addiction for "watching the flames dancing", and exposition on her family's disappearance. As the film begins, it remains ambiguous as to which inmate is actually Jedidiah Sawyer, the eventual Leatherface. Maury and Bustillo even considered leading the audience to believe that Clarice could become the titular character, "It wasn't a so crazy idea to have regarding the passion Leatherface had for dresses and makeup in the previous movies."
- Sam Coleman as Bud
- Sam Coleman portrays Bud, a hulking mental patient that escapes the institution with Jackson, Clarice, and Ike.
Additionally, Julian Kostov portrays Ted Hardesty in the film, the father of Sally Hardesty and Franklin Hardesty from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Although his role is brief, there was going to be an additional scene exploring his family that was removed for budgetary reasons. Nubbins Sawyer, the older brother of Leatherface known simply as "The Hitchhiker" in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, is played by Dejan Angelov. Lorina Kamburova fills the role of Hal Hartman's daughter, whose death sets the plot into motion, while Boris Kabakchief plays Jedidiah Sawyer in his child years. Other acting credits include Dimo Alexiev, Nathan Cooper, and Nicole Andrews.
Production
Concept and development
In January 2013, it was revealed that due to the success of Texas Chainsaw 3D, Millennium Films began planning a sequel film to be called Texas Chainsaw 4 which was expected to begin filming later in 2013 in the state of Louisiana. Millennium Films Chairman Avi Lerner stated that the project was brought to him by Christa Campbell and Lati Grobman and that Millennium had signed on to produce, with Lionsgate distributing the finished product. Executive producer Mark Burg clarified that the sequel was prematurely announced and had not been authorised, "The rights are controlled by Carl [Mazzocone] and Main Line Pictures, no matter what Millennium says. Millennium simply sold the foreign rights and they will not tell us when a sequel is ready to be made. The script was developed by Carl, myself and writer/director John Luessenhop. Maybe they're looking for something to sell at Berlin, but they have no right to announce this sequel." The idea for a prequel came when Seth M. Sherwood was given the chance to pitch the film to the studio. Dissatisfied with the inconsistencies of the franchise's continuity, he opted to make a Chainsaw film that wasn't just another sequel to the original: "My pitch was always about doing it completely out of left field and making it different. The first thing I said to Millennium was 'I bet I can tell you what everybody else is pitching you and it's X-Y-Z, but I want to do 1-2-3', and luckily, that's the direction they were interested in going as well." The script was approached as a story of identity, based on the statements given by Tobe Hooper and Gunnar Hansen on how the character Leatherface is entirely devoid of personality beyond the masks he wears and what his family commands him to do. Sherwood chose not to have Leatherface be born as mentally disabled, finding the story of a functional person that has their mental capabilities reduced to be more fascinating. Producer Les Whedon detailed the reasoning behind accepting Sherwood's pitch: "What interested and enticed us about this production was the fact that we were presented with an opportunity to re-invent the franchise. It was the opportunity to almost go behind-the-scenes into the beginning of how Leatherface was created. What happened? Who is Leatherface and how did the whole character come to be?" Despite the film's explanatory premise, co-director Julien Maury found it important to maintain some of the lead character's mystique, referring the project simply as "moments from his young years."
Pre-production
On August 13, 2014, Seth M. Sherwood was announced to write the film, under the title Leatherface. On October 31, 2014, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo were hired to direct the film, who admired its distinction in narrative from the series' previous installments: "When we first received the script, of course it's not everyday that you have the opportunity to see Leatherface on the front page and we were very surprised, in a good way, that the script was taking a different path, and it's quite original." Producer Whedon elucidated that the directors were chosen because of their "perfect vision" and their "edge to their storytelling". Upon signing on to the project, Maury and Bustillo requested rewrites, in which Sherwood gave his support. The general plot structure remained the same, though the directors wanted the screenplay to match their vision. Nearly every death sequence was altered and the ending, originally a mass murder involving Leatherface killing at least thirty people with his chainsaw, was changed, "It was really over the top and even if we like blood and gore, we were like, no, that's not the character, we cannot do that." In March and April 2015, Sam Strike, James Bloor, Stephen Dorff, and Jessica Madsen joined the cast, respectively. On May 5, 2015, Lili Taylor was publicised to replace Angela Bettis, who dropped out due to a scheduling conflict. The following day, Vanessa Grasse joined the cast to play Lizzy.
Filming
Principal photography began on May 18, 2015, shooting on locations in Bulgaria. The Bulgaria location was used for budgetary reasons, as Millennium Films had a studio in the area. To accommodate the 1960s era in which the film is set, cars modeled after that of the period were sent to the filming areas. Sites were also chosen for an aesthetic of wild, open fields and scrubs that resemble the Texas landscape. Seth M. Sherwood likened the film's visual style to that of an art film, comparing it to "Badlands with gore". In addition to the brutal murders in the screenplay, additional kills were inserted by directors Bustillo and Maury during filming, with the creation of Leatherface's first flesh-mask cited by Sherwood as his personal favourite. Practical effects were primarily used to bring the killings, corpses, and gore to life; much of the budget was spent on building a realistic cow carcass. The crew utilised computer-generated imagery as necessary, albeit to a much lesser extent. Two chainsaws were created for filming, a rubber chainsaw and an electric chainsaw. The rubber chainsaw was a variant used for the safety of the actors, with the intention of only using the computer-generated effects when needed. As such, a life-like dummy of Doctor Lang's bloodied corpse was also used in the scenes taking place after his death. Leatherface was made intentionally graphic in response to fan criticisms of Texas Chainsaw 3D lacking sufficient violence. Lati Globman said on the matter, "Gore is not always the point in horror movies, although there will be plenty, it needs to be psychologically challenging and twisted." While five of the TCM franchise's seven films have been shot in Texas, one in California and one in Louisiana, Bulgarian filming marks the first time one has been shot outside the United States. Filming continued through June 2015, lasting a sum of twenty-seven days.
Sherwood wrote some of the film's locations into the script as homage to Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. As Sherwood explains, "The original Leatherface, Chainsaw 3, took the idea of the backwoods isolation of the original and exploded it tenfold. I always think of the locations of this film--the scrub brush filled badlands and remote roadside outposts as feeling like another world--a dark fairy tale land in some way. I filled my story with similar locations to hopefully capture a similar vibe." The fictional Sawyer farm is a key location in Leatherface, which was rebuilt to accurately resemble its appearance in the first Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The farm was originally going to be used sparingly, until Sherwood discussed the matter with directors Maury and Bustillo. Sherwood stated, "Developing the script with the directors was actually just super-easy. We knew what we wanted to do from the start, and they got it and they were right along with me. I didn't have the farmhouse a lot and they were like 'If we are going to build the set and this is the famous farmhouse, we should use it' and I totally agreed with that. And so we moved the third act, mostly taking place at the farmhouse." The Sawyer homestead was adduced by cinematographer Antoine Sanier as being particularly rousing to film: "It's a real house that has been shot many times, but we cannot see it very well [in the previous films]. It's always a little bit hidden or dark, so it was really impressive to get into this process and also to be a link to the other guys that have been shooting this kind of set."
Continuity
Serving as a direct prequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Leatherface was written by Seth M. Sherwood to also act as a prelude to the series as a whole. Sherwood intentionally distanced the film from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake and its prequel The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, while respecting the fictional events of the original film and its various sequels. Leatherface's characterisation is based on Gunnar Hansen's performance from the original film. Certain character names, such as Drayton, Nubbins, and the Sawyer surname, were pulled from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. The creation of the deranged lawman Hal Hartman was inspired by Lefty Enright, a Texas Ranger that appeared in the second film, while Clarice was originally conceived as a tribute to Chop Top Sawyer. Hal Hartman is the father of Burt Hartman, a vigilante character that first appeared in Texas Chainsaw 3D. The character Verna Sawyer (Lili Taylor) was played by Marilyn Burns in Texas Chainsaw 3D. Sherwood confirmed that the Texas Chainsaw film canon followed by Lionsgate Pictures and Millennium Films consists of, chronologically, Leatherface, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Texas Chainsaw 3D: "While there's plenty of things for fans, one could also go into [Leatherface] blind as their first TCM film and effectively see the beginning of the story."
Release
Leatherface was originally slated for a 2016 release, which it did not meet. Despite having reached completion, it was temporarily shelved by Lionsgate Films. Sherwood speculated that the studio might have been afraid that they wouldn't make back their investment after another film underperformed, but admitted that he had no concrete explanation for the delay: "In a strange way, I started to romanticize the idea it became some legendary lost film. It would be coveted - something spoken about, something people would try to contrive some way of seeing, something that would show up on a tired unused media at a convention in 50 years." A film titled Leatherface received a direct-to-video release from Lightning Pictures in the United Kingdom in January 2017, featuring a masked chainsaw-brandishing figure on the home video cover. However, this film was not the Texas Chain Saw Massacre prequel, but rather a re-packaging of the unrelated Playing With Dolls: Bloodlust. The release was criticised by members of the press for its misleading marketing, with William Bibbiani scrutising on Blumhouse.com that "It's not uncommon for horror movies to pick up new titles in domestic or foreign markets in an attempt to capitalize on various trends, but this is a particularly egregious example. It goes beyond mockbusters, which try to trick you into thinking it's the real deal, and simply takes the title of an upcoming, anticipated horror movie and tries to pass itself off as that movie." Playing With Dolls director Rene Perez apologised for the title change, "I am apposed [sic] to this title change but I am powerless to stop it. The sales agency didn't even inform me that a sale was made to the UK. At the moment I am making a 3rd Playing with Dolls movie. I will be self releasing the new Playing with Dolls online to avoid any issues like this in the future."
In May 2017, producer Christa Campbell stated that the prequel would be released in October 2017. It premiered at FrightFest 2017 on August 25, followed by an exclusive release through the DirecTV satellite service on September 21, and wide distribution via Video on demand and a limited theatrical run coinciding on October 20, making a reported total of $858,006 at the worldwide box office. It was also selected as programming for the 2017 Screamfest Horror Film Festival, which ran from October 10, 2017, to October 19 at the TCL Chinese Theatre, as well as the Nightmares Film Festival on October 19. The motion picture was published on home video platforms, specifically Blu-ray, DVD, and digital media, on December 19, 2017. Additional Blu-ray features included deleted scenes, a Making of featurette, and an alternate ending.
Critical response
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Leatherface received an approval rating of 33% based on 33 reviews, and an average rating of 3.9/10. On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 40 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
Stephen Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter referred to the film as "a respectful origin story for the long-running Texas Chainsaw Massacre horror franchise" and also complemented the performances of Stephen Dorff and Lili Taylor. Variety reflected that "This Texas Chainsaw 'origin story' is a somewhat mixed bag, but it's also an earnest and well-crafted attempt at franchise course-correction. There's plenty of graphic violence here, but Leatherface is plot-driven rather than merely kill-driven. But that, too, is a useful re-direction: Nothing is ever going to fully recapture the berserker mood that made Hooper's original so terrifying, despite its deceptive lack of actual on-screen gore." Bloody Disgusting gave it a 3.5/5 score, saying that "Bustillo and Maury have made the best TCM film in quite some while. The fact that Leatherface avoids the slasher playbook in its road movie set-up may alone be enough to explain the lack of a wide theatrical release, but this is an entertaining splatter film well worth a digital rental."
Rating the film 4/5 stars, Eye for Film commented that "Of all the films in the Texas Chainsaw series, this is probably the least gory, a fact that will no doubt disappoint some fans. It certainly has its moments and those disturbed by gore should still approach it with caution, but it's nothing like as gratuitous as much of what has gone before. Events happen to serve the story more than the theme. Horror is found in different places." Staci Wilson of Dread Central wrote that "Not to say I loved Leatherface - It's far too disgusting for my taste (I'm okay with gore, but there's some gooey necrophilia in this flick that I felt was just thrown in for the ick of it), and there are too many plot holes. Still, it's a very well made film, the cinematography is gorgeous, and the acting is aces across the board", giving a final verdict of 3/5 stars. Anton Bitel of SciFiNow appraised, "In spite, or perhaps because, of all the splatter and excess, this still does not come close to the elusively non-explicit horrors of the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, even as it serves as their grim rites of passage. If 'Nobody messes with our family' is the ultimate message, then Maury and Bustillo certainly maintain a respectful continuity to reunite the old clan, as Jed pieces together his future identity from the different influences around him." For being what he called "the most entertaining and pleasing TCM film since 1974's classic", ComingSoon.Net writer Jerry Smith gave the prequel a positive review. He assessed that "Do we really need yet another horror icon origin story and if so, would the explanation be anything we haven't seen before? The answers to these questions are quite refreshing", contrasting the origin story given to that of Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning as having been able to "acknowledge what came before it without ever seeming like a wink-wink to the previous films in the series". V.O.D.zilla's Matthew Turner assigned a 6.2 rating, opining "This Texas Chainsaw prequel lacks the original's terror but gets by on style, strong performances and a bucket or two of the red stuff."
In a negative review, Flickering Myth critiqued that "Some stories just don't need telling, and Leatherface is one of them. It's not that it retcons elements of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre mythology, or that it's a 'pointless prequel' - it's just an empty movie. You'll have forgotten you've seen it as soon as the credits roll. Prequels, sequels and remakes can all enrich a story and tell it from a new perspective, but Leatherface just doesn't do that."Screen International called the film "a production line effort with an eye on cashflow rather than the demented work of art Hooper loosed on the world", stating "this eighth entry is above average for its attenuated series. Gore levels are as high as expected and, naturally, the finale leaves things open for further installments." Regarding the film's viewer appeal, HeyUGuys theorised, "Not only is this prequel attempting to deliver something fans of the series don't necessarily want, it doesn't really do what it promises particularly well either. One for completists for sure, but on the whole Leatherface is too detached for TCM fans, and too extreme for the wider public." William Bibbiani of IGN ranked it as the worst Texas Chainsaw Massacre film because "it adds nothing new or interesting to the series. The problem is not just that this film is a prequel, so we know exactly where it's going, but that the road to the inevitable takes us through almost unbearably familiar territory. It honestly looks as though the filmmakers who made Leatherface didn't watch the original films, but watched all of the films that ripped off The Texas Chain Saw Massacre instead." Film critic Rob Gonsalves reviewed that "Hooper's Chainsaw is often imitated, never duplicated (or bested, say I), a sui generis sweatbox odyssey that seems to owe nothing to any other film before it. Leatherface feels properly respectful, made by filmmakers who idolize the original, and that's also its weakness: it's a jumped-up fan film, and because it's meant to be a prequel to Hooper's movie it's locked into whatever happens in that movie. It can't deviate from what we know, and can't truly surprise us." Heather Wixson of Daily Dead went into Leatherface "primed to love it", but felt that the final product "never quite makes up its mind about just what kind of movie it wants to be, and suffers for its indecision. But as a whole, Leatherface is such a disappointing entry because it spends so much time trying to be so many other things than just a straight-up Texas Chainsaw movie, and I couldn't help but wonder why." Wixson commended the cinematography, practical effects, and Lili Taylor's acting, but slammed the third act.
Future
Subsequent to the release of Leatherface, the producers had the rights to make five more films in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise. In April 2015, producer Christa Campbell stated that the fate of the potential films would largely depend on the financial reception and perceived fan reactions toward the 2017 prequel. Campbell later clarified in December 2017 that Lionsgate and Millennium Films had lost the franchise rights due to the time it took to release it.
See also
- List of horror films of 2017
- List of prequels
- Leatherface (disambiguation)
References
Notes
External links
- Official website
- Leatherface at AllMovie
- Leatherface on IMDb
- Leatherface at Metacritic
- Leatherface at Rotten Tomatoes
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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