I love all things horror so when they decide to revisit a franchise of one of the most iconic slashers of our time I am all in. I actually enjoyed the last film in the franchise 2013s Texas Chainsaw 3D and had hoped they were going to keep it moving with what they created. Sadly that doesn’t look to be the case with the latest installment Leatherface starring Stephen Dorff, Lily Taylor, Nicole Andrews, and Sam Coleman, but does it do the iconic film and character justice or will it fail to get the blood flowing?

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Leatherface follows a teenage Leatherface who escapes from a mental hospital with three other inmates, kidnaps a young nurse and takes her on a road trip from hell. Along the way, they are pursued by an equally deranged lawman out for revenge, one of these teens is destined for tragedy and horrors that will destroy his mind, molding him into the monster we now call Leatherface. There are clear expectations when heading into a film in the Texas Chainsaw franchise, but this time around they looked to shake things up with an origin and sadly didn’t fully live up to what it could have been. The film opens fine enough with the family doing things exactly as you might expect, but then it jumps ahead 10 years and becomes something altogether different. Instead of the usual mayhem a big chunk of the film is in an insane asylum introducing us to not only the kids, but other crazed characters as well.

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This leads the film into a road rage type story as some of the escaped inmates and the famed family as they tear a bloody trail across the roadways as they flee from police. This would all be fine and good had it seem to feel like a Chainsaw film, but it doesn’t in anyway. There is plenty of blood and gore to keep the true gore hounds happy despite it being surrounded by an uneven and overall not very good film. There is a great twist at the end that I was surprised about, but this also takes everything that made Leatherface what he was and turns him into a more sympathetic character and in turn not near as scary as he used to be.

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I was really looking forward to this film as I love all the films in the franchise including the bad ones and this one fell in the same category. There are moments to reveal in the blood for fun, but as a whole it is far from the film I had hoped for. Fans of a true origin of Leatherface will no doubt be disappointed as I was, but I have chosen to look at this as one from an alternate reality. Just a piece of advice for filmmakers and writers, there is no need to humanize all our horror icons, we like them crazy.