Leatherface is the 8th film in the franchise, and the first after the truly atrocious Texas Chainsaw 3D- which was surely the most dire, lacklustre, and unsatisfying chapter in the series- with it’s bland characters, clichéd plot, and worse of all gapping plot holes/ chronological errors. So when I initial saw Leatherface was due out I wasn’t expecting much- but after seeing the trailer, and hearing some reviewers feedback it looked promising, well better than Texas Chainsaw 3D.

And I can certainly say now after seeing the film- it’s not too bad, as a modern & brutal horror film, but as a part of the Texas Chainsaw series- I’m less sure. The main issue is that the identity of who Leatherface is not revealed until the last ten/twenty minutes of the film. And the rest of the time your left to guess who he might be out of a group of about three or four young escapees- it’s an interesting idea for a premise, it just didn’t often feel like a chainsaw film. Instead it’s more like a crossbreed between The Devils Rejects & Natural Born Killers(with out the flashy & experimental visuals).

The film starts off quite promising & TCM like- with the Sawyer family having a birthday party for their youngest child  Jedidiah, who I’m guessing is meant to be around eight or so. He’s presented by the families matriarch Verna Sawyer( played wonderfully by Lili Taylor) with a chainsaw, and he’s asked to kill someone at the dinner table, but he can’t do it. As the story progresses we move forward a few years, and after a unpleasant hold-up & barn attack the Sawyer children are removed & put in to the metal asylum by local Sheriff Hartman(Stephen Dorff)- who also changes their names.

Once more we move forward in time again, this time ten years & a group of patients including a nurse hostage escape from the hospital. And what unfolds for the most of remainder of the film is the clearly unbalanced & deranged   Hartman tracking down the young escapes- with mom Sawyer also joining in the chase too. We get a fairly gritty, bloody & sweaty film that’s well enough filmed & acted with some effective tension & gory along the way-  but what we don’t get is really a TCM film.

So in conclusion Leatherface is big improvement on the last part of the series, and when it fleetingly returns to both Sawyer activity & their homestead it does succeed in  setting out what it wanted to do. The issue is that too much of it’s runtime it just feels like a bloody road movie, and not a chainsaw film. I can understand the need to try & do some new/different with the franchise, but really the makers have moved a bit too far away from the original template, and as a result it just lacks enough of TCM DNA to be a wholly successful addition to the franchise.