The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) is a horror classic. Leatherface is a horror icon. The origin story of said icon, Leatherface (2017), is a pile of shit. It might not be technically the worst film I'll see this year, but it is probably going to be the one I enjoy the least, and I saw Troll 2 (1990) about a month ago (if you don't know what that is, look it up.) My dislike of the film mainly comes from the fact that there is so little substance to it. It is such a nothing film. I had almost no reaction to the film, apart from a couple of laughs which I guess was not the intention of directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury. I honestly don'y know how I'm gonna review this film because there is so little to talk about, so i'm most likely just going to shit on it for the next 500 words. The film, as I have mentioned, is an origin story for Leatherface, who we see as a child at the start of the film struggling to kill a man at the request of his family. He is consequently taken away from his family and placed in a youth penitentiary. We then cut to ten years later and are introduced to a new nurse at the penitentiary, Lizzy (Vanessa Grasse), and two of the inmates, Jackson (Sam Strike) and Bud (Sam Coleman). Bud is a large, hulking teen with clear learning difficulties and abnormal strength and we are made to believe this character is Leatherface. Jed's mother, Verna (Lili Taylor), then comes to the penitentiary to break Jed out and incidentally let all the trapped teens go. Lizzy, Bud and Jackson are then captured by two of the more sadisitic teens, Clarice (Jessica Madsen) and Ike (James Bloor), and held hostage as they try to escape to Mexico whilst being pursued by Police office Hal Hartmen (Stephen Dorff).
The characters of Bud and Jackson are a major problem I have with the film, and not for any reason on the part of the performances. In fact, none of the performances in the film are really, really terrible. No one is great, but Lili Taylor holds her own and Christopher Adamson, who plays the head doctor at the penitentiary, really hams it up and is entertaining. And the actors playing Bud and Jackson both do a decent job. Nothing special, but decent. The problem i have with these characters is due to the writing. As a I said earlier, we are made to believe that Bud is Leatherface, mainly due to the fact that the character is basically a young Leatherface. But oh no dear reader, don't be fooled by the casting and writing, for they hath pulled the wool over your eyes. because Bud is shot in the head about an hour into the film. Jackson is in fact Leatherface. Motherfucking Jackson. A young, good looking pin up who seems to be the most mentally and emotionally stable character in the film is fucking Leatherface. Are you fucking kidding me? The film honestly goes beyond any kind of semblance of making sense just so it can have a twist, because every film needs a twist apparently. This kid is 6ft at a push and has a normal build. Leatherface is a behemoth of a man. Are you telling me that Jackson (who is Jed by the way, another spoiler, sorry not sorry), who must be 19 at this time, is going to grow 8 inches and pile on 10 to 15 stone? Its stupid. It is really, really stupid.
There is so little else i can say about the film because it is just so dull. It looks dull, it has a dull soundtrack and the story is dull. But possibly the most heinous crime for a horror, it is painfully not scary. it may be the least scary horror film I have ever seen in fact. Most horror films, no matter how good or bad they may be, will make me jump or scare me at least once. Now, I don't particularly count jump scares as actual scares, but they are part and parcel of modern horror so I have to accept them. This film didn't even manage to make me jump. Not one attempt at a jump scare landed. Not one supposedly scary set piece could draw any tension from me. it just isn't scary at all. This is mainly because the film seems to think that blood is scary. Well film, I'm sorry to tell you that it is not. At least not for me. The film, to its credit(?) is very gory, but this does not equate to it being scary. There are a couple sequences in the film that are put in to be "disgusting" just for the sake of being so. They don't go anywhere and one of them, where three fully grown humans including one massive human, somehow manage to hide inside a dead cow (bullshit, no pun intended). This is probably where my dislike of the film comes from. As a horror fan, to watch a horror film that couldn't even get any kind of reaction out of me is so disappointing. Even though I was not expecting much from the film it delivered so much less.
This review may lead you to believe that I absolutely hate this film. I don't. It is not a good film on any merit, but it is also just so forgettable that I can't really bring myself to hate it. It is also mercifully short, at just 87 minutes and so it gets points for that. But that is as nice as I can really be for this. I'm not sure who was pining for a Leatherface origin story, but whoever it was needs to hang their head in shame because what they got for their wishes was this pile of shit. Don't ever watch it, it is a waste of your time and is time that I will never get back.