I had no clue this movie existed until I decided to write about the entire series. I really didn’t want to watch it, especially when I found out it was a prequel about a teenage Leatherface. So I’m not going to be fair to this movie. It’s actually okay, but I didn’t want it. It’s somehow worse than the prequel to the remake to me for no other reason than that I’m tired of the series. But I said I’d write about all these fucking movies, so here goes.
This film is a prequel to the original and also Texas Chainsaw. You’d think this would mean I would be interested in it because Texas Chainsaw left me with so many questions about the dead, rich aunt, who is played by Lily Tomlin in this one. But this movie just made that film even dumber. It’s revealed that the aunt is basically the leader of the family, encouraging the killing they do.
This is stupid to me because if she was gung-ho about all the killing, then why did she just gather up Leatherface and keep him locked up in her basement later on? If she’s this stone cold killer matriarch, wouldn’t she immediately seek revenge? Instead, she lives a quiet life in her mansion, waiting for her long lost niece to take over once she dies. It’s fucking stupid and is not in keeping with the character presented here. Because this family is not the type for long-term plans. They just kill whenever they fucking feel like it, and get away with it for a while somehow.
Putting that aspect of the film aside and just forgetting about Texas Chainsaw (which is for the best), Leatherface then becomes the origin of the titular character. Rather than being genetically inclined to murder like Alexandra Daddario in the last movie (I can’t forget that fucking movie!), this Leatherface has to be fucked up into becoming a maimed killer.
Leatherface is presented as a kid who just seems to attract murder. He’s born into a murderous family, so there’s that. He’s taken away and sent to a mental institute for troubled kids. When he’s a teenager, a murderous riot takes place, and he’s taken hostage by a dumbass Bonnie and Clyde type from the institution. They go on the road, killing everywhere they go. This kid is a fucking magnet for murder!
None of this was interesting to me, or to the writers, it seems, because they used a time jump to create a needless mystery to the film. Leatherface gets taken away when he’s very little, and then the movie jumps ten years to the institution, where all the kids have different names (so parents can’t track them down, for some reason?). Because of this, we technically don’t know which of the kids on the run is the future Leatherface. This whodunit aspect just annoyed me. Not only did I not need to know why Leatherface became a killer, but I definitely didn’t need a lame ass guessing game to go along with it. By the time the real Leatherface was revealed, I just wanted the movie to end.
Obviously, I was not in the right mindset for this film. But I wasn’t alone in my disinterest in the franchise. This movie was released on DirecTv exclusively in 2017 after being shelved by Lionsgate for a year. Lionsgate had originally bought the rights to the series with a potential six films planned, but due to delays with the previous film and this film, they only made two. And they dumped this onto DirecTv, which I didn’t even realize was a thing studios did. It was like releasing a movie straight to streaming before it was really a thing. In that way, this movie is a trailblazer. But what it really means is that people were sick of this franchise, or at least sick of the direction it was going. That was certainly the case for me.
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