Leatherface (2017)
Director: Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo
Screenplay: Seth M. Sherwood
Starring: Stephen Dorff, Vanessa Grasse, Sam Strike, Lili Taylor
Leatherface attempts to serve as a modern origin story for one of horror’s most infamous figures, but it struggles to justify its own existence. For viewers who revere Tobe Hooper’s original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, this film feels less like a meaningful prequel and more like an unnecessary exercise in explaining a myth. Where the 1974 classic built dread through atmosphere, ambiguity and tight craftsmanship, this 2017 entry leans heavily on explicit violence and contrived drama without delivering the emotional or thematic depth needed to make the backstory matter.
The film centers on Jed Caulfield (Sam Strike), the young man who will eventually become Leatherface. The screenplay tries to frame Jed as a sympathetic protagonist—an awkward, damaged teen caught in a violent, abusive family dynamic. In practice, however, the character remains underwritten. We see Jed in a psych ward and watch his family push him toward brutality during a childhood birthday scene, but the movie rarely gives him interiority or believable growth. Key traits are told rather than shown: lines of dialogue announce that he’s quiet, or that he’s violent, instead of letting the performance and direction make those qualities resonate.
When the plot forces Jed into direct conflict—after his brothers participate in the murder of a policeman’s daughter, prompting the officer to seek vengeance—the film tries to reframe Jed as a reluctant, almost heroic figure. This approach results in a strange tonal imbalance: the cop becomes increasingly sadistic to create sympathy for Jed, while peripheral characters exist only to affirm Jed’s decency. A nurse who shows him kindness is defined almost entirely by her warmth; a criminal couple in the psych ward mainly functions as a device to push the action forward. These one-dimensional portrayals undercut the potential for genuine psychological complexity.
Visually and stylistically, Leatherface borrows from other contemporary horror films in ways that feel derivative rather than inspired. Several set-pieces evoke the mechanical cruelty of Saw—barn traps, sudden gore and contraptions—without the puzzle-box intelligence that made that franchise engaging. At other moments the film’s close-up aesthetic calls to mind modern entries in the genre, yet the lighting and camera work often land flat, resembling a generic TV drama more than a taut horror piece. Production design aims for the 1960s setting, but costumes and performances too often register as modern, which weakens the period atmosphere.
The film’s abrasive content does not help its cause. Leatherface lore includes cannibalism and human-skin masks; here, however, the filmmakers push shock for shock’s sake. A sequence involving a corpse and sexualized depravity crosses a line where provocation feels gratuitous rather than meaningful. When viewers are not invested in the characters, violence becomes hollow spectacle—gutting the tension and empathy a successful origin story needs.
Pacing and editing are additional problems. The film shifts into a road-rampage mode after a break-out from the institution, trading coherent character development for a succession of violent set pieces: a diner shooting, a stolen vehicle, and a short-lived life on the run in a motorhome. The narrative promises a destination—Mexico—but the momentum collapses and the film never earns that journey. The climax is dragged out through a convoluted series of events that ultimately resolve only a few plot threads: Jed suffers severe facial trauma, undergoes a makeshift reconstruction, and commits further violent acts that attempt to justify his transformation. These moments might have had emotional weight if the film had invested in relationships earlier, but the closeness between Jed and any supporting character, including the kind nurse, feels rushed and unearned.
Directors Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo have shown they can create shockingly effective cinema in the past, notably with the visceral intensity of A l’intérieur. Yet here their instincts are mismatched with a script that leans on clichés and spectacle. Sam Strike and the rest of the cast do what they can with limited material, but the result is a derivative, uneven prequel that fails to illuminate the original character in a satisfying way.
If you’re curious about Leatherface’s origins, this film supplies an explanation—but not one that enhances the myth. It substitutes exposition and gore for the slow-building dread, ambiguous morality, and cinematic craft that made the original so memorable. For those who want a richer, scarier experience, returning to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre will likely be more rewarding than this attempt at backstory.
3/24