Movie Review : "Leatherface"

It makes me happy that there is more worth writing about in horror over the course of the past month. This gives me hope that I might not be sitting here staring at a blank page when it comes to making an end of the year list. Reboots, and Prequels are normally not worth a shit. This movie however was fun, well-written and did not re-spin the same shit some of the other Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies have. We have even been done somewhat of an origin story before with the re-make. I think this movie falls in line with the established mythology of the character and doesn’t try to to give it any kind of a spin or shove some modern message down your throat. They gave just enough of the perverse twist this movie needed without trying to hard or playing it too Hollywood. It holds up to my no survivors rule when it comes to horror. Horror needs to be hopeless and the tension is waiting for the other shoe to drop. They fake you out in terms of who you think is going to become Leather Face until the film’s third act. The fake out is pretty heavy handed , but well done.

The gore is well done. Perhaps even more for gore hounds than not , as sometime in the original movie the violence was more implied where things get pretty graphic here. I think the ruthless nature of this film is what helps keeping this in perspective and helps with the story that they are trying to tell. While I like torture porn, I don’t feel this falls into that sub-genre, though it is firmly a slasher. The only obvious thing about the movie to me is that it feels a lot like “the Devil’s Rejects”. Granted those Rob Zombie movies were heavily influenced by the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films, it feels like those albums where Black Sabbath was trying to sound like Alice in Chains .Even to the point of having a bad ass demented female Anti- Hero like Baby.  This did not diminish my appreciation of the film.

The damsel in distress,who is the film’s by definition protagonist.Can be a mixed bag when you are sorting through how and when you want her to die. I think her fate could have held a little more impact in regards to the psychological journey of becoming Leatherface. I can always judge how effective the flow of a movie is based on how fast I get through it when watching it casually at home and I plowed through this in two sitting. I think some of the menace could have been increased in regards to what the protagonist endures and that she should have been broken down on more levels , but that is just my wishful thinking, the reality is I don’t have any major complaints with this movie and think it does what it set out to do very well.