Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo direct Sam Strike, Stephen Dorff and Vanessa Grasse in this 60s set origin story for Texas Chainsaw Massacre horror icon, Leatherface. 

As a horror this doesn’t really work… there’s no real tension to it. No sympathetic characters to root for, when the deaths inevitably come they are random with little attempt at building fear. Yet Leatherface has a warm nostalgic glow to it (Terrence Malick’s Badlands is a clear inspirational touchstone for it) and we take a surprising path to get that nice young Sawyer boy to turn face wearing powertool killer. I feel if they spent just an extra ten minutes beefing up the shock sequences it wouldn’t all feel like a mere one track domino rally. As it is, this is just grizzled and gorgeous people knocking into each other until the legend is left standing. Only a threesome involving a rotten corpse and an escape involving a dead cow match the viscous ickyness of the Tobe Hooper’s originals. The lurid ferocity isn’t even attempted.

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