Review in Brief: Leatherface (2017)

Well, I’ve certainly seen worse TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE reboots. The last one, for instance. Asylum horror and hillbilly horror are both thoroughly outdated scare sub-genres, and LEATHERFACE tries a bit of both, approaching neither with any more subtlety than power tool butchery. As a Texas Chainsaw film it’s probably a bit too slick (not just with blood) but it’s got a pretty neat premise: which of our escaped band of teenage mental patients will turn out to be the titular skin-wearer? You can see the twists coming a mile off and nothing in it, from the scares to the tension-building to the performances are all that sophisticated. Kudos for finding an actor who looks just like a twenty year younger Jim Siedow (Dimo Alexiev) though: they didn’t need to do that, but it’s such touches like that, and the painstaking recreation of the Sawyer farmhouse from the 70s blueprints that ties this latest hit-and-miss reimagining to that depraved universe. SSP

About Sam Sewell-Peterson

Writer and film fanatic fond of black comedies, sci-fi, animation and films about dysfunctional families.
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