DirecTV Review: Leatherface (2017)

"Leatherface is more of a road revenge flick than it is an origin story."

(aka The Road to Mexico.)
Release Date: September 21st.
Country: USA.
Rating: R.
Written by: Seth M. Sherwood.
Directed by: Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury.
Starring: Stephen Dorff, Vanessa Grasse, Lili Taylor, Finn Jones, Sam Strike, and Jessica Madsen.

I'm going to come right out and say it: I love the 2003 TCM remake, and its follow-up, TCM: The Beginning, nearly as much as I love the original. In a vastly different way, of course, but I thought they were good flicks.

About this prequel/re-imagining, I'll say that while it's plagued with issues, that it's still better than every other film in the franchise, save for maybe TCM 2, which is debatable.

Did I mention that this movie has issues though? Because it does.

It's 1955, and Verna Sawyer and her brood of inbred whelps live a happy life, killing people for fun. When the Sawyer kids lure a dumb-ass girl (who should have stayed in the car) to her death, they invoke the rage of her father, the sociopathic Texas Ranger, Hal Hartman, who has them committed to a boys home for the criminally insane.

WHY WOULD YOU FOLLOW THAT INTO THE WOODS?!?

Ten years later, little Jed (I thought his name was Bubba) Sawyer is all grown up and living in the asylum where he was left to rot, just waiting around to become Leatherface. Missing her son, Verna visits the asylum, where she sparks a riot in which he and some other teen nutbags escape, taking a sweet and innocent nurse hostage in the process.

CAN YOU EVEN TELL WHICH ONE OF THEM IS NOT INSANE?

As they make a run for Mexico, Hartman and his lawdogs give pursuit. What follows next is a bloody cacophony of twisted death, very little of which involves a chainsaw.

Ultra-violent road revenge antics ensue.

YEAH, THAT'S PRETTY MUCH HOW EVERY SOUTHERN LAWMAN LOOKED BACK IN THE 60'S.

Leatherface serves as more of a great series of gory set pieces than it does a prequel to one of the most beloved Horror franchises of all time. It's bloody and nasty, which should delight the gorehounds out there, but a lot of those bits feel like they were included just to make the movie seem over-the-top, rather than serving the central narrative.

Most of the story is told from the perspective of the bloodthirsty teenagers who escape from the asylum with Leatherface, instead of, you know, making the story about him, which makes it feel almost pointless to call this a Texas Chainsaw flick. Maybe they got caught up in the "twist" that the movie lays on us towards the end, and they thought that building everything around that would somehow make it better?

We already know the Sawyer clan is a bunch of deranged, backwoods cannibals, and that Leatherface is the half-wit muscle of the brood, so why try and change it up and make him something altogether different? By the time it started to feel like a TCM flick at the end, I thought to myself "This is where they should have started things, not ended them.

That said, the movie works on some levels. It delivers on gore, it's got plenty of twisted action throughout, and the cast did a solid job in their roles; Stephen Dorff rocked it as the Texas Ranger who is as deranged as the inmates he's pursuing.

THERE'S NO JOY IN THIS MAN'S LIFE. NONE.

The twist... I won't give it away (you'll figure it out towards the end), but I will say that I didn't dig it. Aside from it being there to seem clever, it just didn't play well for me.

SHE APPARENTLY DIDN'T LIKE IT EITHER.

How sick do you have to be to have a threesome with a corpse?!?

"DRINK UP AND PRETEND THIS SHIT ISN'T HAPPENING."

If nothing else, Leatherface delivers on the blood and gore, which is pretty much a staple of any Maury & Bustillo film. The headshot in the diner, the threesome, the Texas Tauntaun scene... this one gets plenty nasty.

WELL, IT WAS A GOOD RUN WHILE IT LASTED...

Jessica Madsen bares all, and even french kisses a rotting corpse...

...AND THAT'S WHY SHE HAS TO GO TO DIRTY WHORE JAIL!

The bottom line is this: Leatherface is an uneven addition to the TCM universe. It's a gorfest that loosely gives us some background on the titular character's childhood, but plays it too casual with the plot to be considered a definitive Leatherface origin story. I mean, it is an origin story, but only at the beginning and end really.

If you're looking for a bloody entry in the story of the Sawyer clan, and can overlook the film's shortcomings, then Leatherface is definitely one to rent when it hits VOD outlets later in the month.

C+

Leatherface is streaming on DirecTV now, and will hit VOD outlets and limited theaters on October 20th.

The girls in Texas sure are purty!

Screener Review: Killing Ground (2017)

"No more camping for us. Ever."

Thanks to the lovely folks over at the company that handles promotion for IFC, we were able to get our hands on an early screener of Killing Ground.

Although we had to sit on the review until near release date (the Comic Con news pushed it past then), we've had a week to digest the movie, and sort our thoughts out on the matter... and we've come to the conclusion that even though it's overly-familiar and not a perfect film, Killing Ground is one hell of a wicked backwoods flick that is bound to stick with you well after it's over.

Because it sure did us.

Ian and Sam decide to spend a romantic New Years Eve camping at a remote lake at the end of a long, winding, desolate road... because they've obviously never seen a Horror movie before. They're puzzled by the empty tent they find when they arrive, and at the fact that their car has a flat tire, but hell, let's stay here anyway, because nothing bad happens to people when they camp in Australia.

"SCREAMS? LET'S JUST GO TO BED."

Margaret and Rob are also camping, but with their teen daughter and infant baby in tow. They break out the guitar, smoke with their daughter, and decide to go on a hike. Another family that clearly has watched very few, if any, Horror movies.

THAT BABY KNOWS SOMETHING ISN'T RIGHT!

The there's German and Chook; the skeevy, whiskey tango creepers who spend their time trying to pick up girls in bars, and looking for victims to rape and murder, because they obviously have seen some Horror movies, and they know how shit works.

The real fun begins when the three storylines intertwine, in a clever way, which spells disaster for every single one of them... well, most of them anyway.

"WELCOME TO AUSTRALIA, MATE."

Killing Ground is a movie that has been done before. The whole "A group of people head into the woods for a relaxing weekend, only to be terrorized by murderous locals" plot has been done to death, but here it's not only done very well, but dare we say in a clever way to boot.

The way that the timelines for each group of characters unfold may be obvious to most people form the beginning, but damn it if it didn't ratchet up the tension a few notches, and made the way everything played out far more engaging than it might have been. Of course with the film boasting a strong script and great performances to begin with, it probably would have worked either way.

Aaron Pedersen first caught our attention back in 2014 in the criminally underseen Mystery Road (review HERE.) He chewed up the screen in that excellent flick playing a quiet, tough guy who saves the day... which made his turn here as the scumbag who uses people's lives for twisted sport so compelling. The quiet menace that the guy can convey is insane, and he was a truly terrifying bad guy. If for no other reason, this movie is worth seeing to watch him work. The rest of the cast worked it out too, but he was the standout.

Of course Killing Ground is also wroth seeing because it's an effective, intense thriller that will most likely leave you shook. The target practice scene and the shot of the baby running through the woods... sweet Jesus.

THIS MAN NEEDS TO BE IN EVERYTHING.

If you travel to a remote location, find an abandoned tent, and then notice that one of your car tires is flat, can you please just get the hell out of there? Walk if you have to, but just leave?

And when a skeevy dude with a rifle slung over his shoulder shows up and asks you to take a hike into the woods with him, can you just tell him no?

Come on, people. Survival is little more than common sense!

"OI, IT'S PROBABLY NOTHING, LOVE. LET'S NOT LEAVE."

Can someone please tell us what happened to the baby? Is it still out there in the woods with Scraps? Nippy? Whatever the fuck the dog's name was?

OH WAIT, SHE'S GOT HIM...

Killing Ground is heavy on disturbing set pieces, but it's not quite a gorefest. Still, there are people being shot, and some convincing rock violence to be had.

THE LOVE SCENE.

Nope, and they even kept the rape scenes off-screen, which was a good move.

POOR GIRL DESERVED BETTER...

Yet another intense and brutal thriller from Australia, Killing Ground takes a familiar plot and does it great justice.It's not perfect (the last bit of the movie didn't feel as strong as what came before), but it's a hell of a nerve-jangling ride, and one well worth taking.

B+ 

Killing Ground is available on VOD now.

Harriet Dyer and Tiarnie Coupland; two of Australia's finest.

Shudder Review: Inner Demon (2017)

"Turns out the title of this one is quite literal."

And here goes Shudder again, bringing Horror fans another movie that was in release limbo, and giving it the exposure that it deserves.

Inner Demon is the 2nd part of a planned trilogy by writer/director Ursula Dabrowsky. We haven't seen the first one, the ultra low-budget Family Demons (the final installment, The Devil's Work, is apparently in production now), but if this middle installment is any indication, we definitely need to check it out.

Because the bottom line is that Inner Demon is a solid exercise in effective filmmaking on a budget.

Sam is babysitting her little sister, Maddy, as their Mom works the night shift. Maddy complains that something scary is under her bed, and Sam explains to her that it's The Babadook, and if she doesn't get her little ass back in bed, she's going to let the monster eat her. Then a skeevy couple shows up, throws Sam in their trunk, and drives away.

HER INNER DEMON IS BLEEDING DOWN HER SHIRT.

Sam escapes from the trunk, and runs like hell through the Australian woods to find help, and she happens on a farmhouse that ends up being no help at all, because it turns out to be where the creepy couple lives. She realizes this too late, and is forced to hide in the closet and pray that they don't find her... all while slowly bleeding out from a gash in her side, and wondering what happened to her little sister.

A young girl's best attempt at survival ensues.

SHOULDA KEPT RUNNING.

Inner Demon is just the kind of lower-budget flick that we like; it's intense and disturbing, boasts a competent cast, and it goes to places that we never expected it to. It didn't feel like we were watching a low-budget movie at all; from the direction, to the look of the film, it was all handled extremely well by writer/director Ursula Dabrowsky. It starts fast, and doesn't ever really slow down to catch its breath at all.

Sarah Jeavons made for a sympathetic heroine here, making us genuinely feel her plight, and doing so (for the most part) from the confines of a closet. Andreas Sobik made for a grimy and terrifyingly imposing killer too.

As for the way the movie ended, well, I'm not actually sure how I feel about it. On one hand, the twist in the third act was completely unexpected and I dig it, but it kinda killed the tension that had built up over the first two acts, and sent the movie into familiar trope territory. ***MILD ENDING SPOILERS*** Everything after Sam leaves the closet and finds her sister felt tacked on, and a bit confused. ***END SPOILERS***

DON'T BE SCARED, GIRLS, EVERYTHING WILL NOT BE FINE.

Inner Demon had some bloody moments and cringe-inducing scenes, including that nagging wound of Sam's (and how she deals with it), and a brutal beating.

HE LOVES THE WETWORK.

No nudity to be found here, but Sarah Jeavons looks moity foine in a tank top.

I HOPE THEY SURVIVE...

For its first two-thirds, Inner Demon is a taut little thriller that did a good job of maintaining a palpable amount of tension. Where the movie loses it a bit is in its third act, where suddenly it goes in a wildly different direction, and ended with a final shot that make us shake our heads.

It's a good flick overall, I'm just wondering how Horror fans are going to take that twist...

B

Inner Demon is available now on VOD (streaming for free on Amazon Prime)

Sarah Jeavons is alovely Aussie with a bright future.