Best movie ever!

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

In case you are not aware from the title of the film, this is the origin of Leatherface, the main character from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The film, itself, looks like it tried too hard to copy the Rob Zombie formula for horror film-making, particularly his style of extending the back-story of Michael Myers, as well as obviously taking a lot of inspiration from Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses and Devil's Rejects. That is kind of ironic since Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses and Devil's Rejects were at least partially inspired by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In any event, as a horror fan, when I heard that there was going to be a Leatherface origin film, I was very excited! Unfortunately, that excitement quickly dissipated when I finally watched the film. It starts out slow, but OK, it seems like they wanted to work their way into developing the characters a bit. However, they just sort of gave up and it just fell apart very quickly. The writing was awful, the dialogue was terrible. At times it felt like I was watching a student film-making project. As far as horror goes, it had its moment but nothing "jump out of your seat" scary; mostly just ho-hum although a couple scenes were very gory still weren't really satisfying. The gory parts just kind of happen and then you're moved along. Lili Taylor was great but she was held down by poor production. If this film had a bigger budget and more time allotted to development, I think it could have been great. Sadly that was not to be the case and so now you just have another entry in the Texas Chainsaw franchise which will be forgotten just as quickly as it was released.

LEATHERFACE is an ill-conceived prequel to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, supposedly telling of Leatherface's back story and the events that made him a killer. Not that it does. Instead this plays out as a cheesy murder mystery for the most part, with lots of cheesy and over the top gruesome death sequences. The original Tobe Hooper classic was all about what you didn't see, whereas this is a film that delights in showing bodily dismemberment and chainsaws penetrating chest cavities and lopping off limbs. The asylum setting is an unusual one that doesn't really fit, while the subsequent road movie action feels like it belongs in another movie. Of the cast, only the old timers (Stephen Dorff, Lili Taylor, Christopher Adamson) impress, while the rest are bogged down by the sheer numb-headed predictability of it all.

It takes an hour and 17 minutes before Leatherface actually kills someone, the time leading up to that was pretty forgettable too. There's literally no horror elements to this movie either, just some lame gore and a sadistic family.

If I could rate this movie into the minus numbers I would because I've never seen a more ridiculous film that is driven entirely by the level of violence it depicts for the sheer pleasure of it. Its films like this that tend to show how bankrupt/devoid Hollywood has become of ideas to make a film instead resorting to feeding off a franchise that goes back to 1973 and has had countless sequels since then. In this case what you have are a pack of escape psychotics running around killing indiscriminately and a sheriff out for revenge who isn't much better. What lacks for a storyline is effectively made up with the gorefest deployed here, including a graphic sex scene involving a dead person. Its almost as if there was no desire to create characters here of even the most basic level of complexity to keep the viewer interested and that is sad because the notion of a prequel to this story could've been done in a far more compelling way without the reliance on depicting various methods of killing to make up for it. What I will say is that this isn't a film for anyone under the age of 18, unlike previous iterations as even I had a hard time sitting through it. I like the horror film genre but those movies that depict varying degrees of violence instead of true suspense just aren't worth the price of admission.