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 Asylum horror and hillbilly horror are both thoroughly outdated scare sub-genres, and LEATHERFACE tries a bit of both, approaching neither with any more subtlety than power tool butchery.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
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About SSP
Sam Sewell-Peterson
I'm not paid to write about film - I do it because I love it. Favourites include Sam Mendes, Guillermo del Toro, Bong Joon-ho, Steven Spielberg, Danny Boyle, Edgar Wright, Taika Waititi and the Coen Brothers. All reviews and articles are original works owned by me. They represent one man's opinion, and I'm more than happy to engage in civilised debate if you disagree.
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