Leatherface (2017): Bloody origin story only raises more questions
By David Lloyd
Nothing is ever as it seems when watching a movie for the first time, especially when you already know most of the characters. Even as an astute movie watcher such as myself, I got lost in this movie. But not in a good way!
*THERE MAY BE SPOILERS, READ WITH CAUTION*
As much as I really wanted to enjoy this movie, I didn’t and I did at the same time. Leatherface had real promise and potential but failed to follow through. The opening scene had me hyped for the rest of this movie. Even when young Jedidiah could not tap into his future self, I still felt relieved and confident knowing who he would become even with that setback.
But the character development should have been better. Even without a name spoken, I knew who Grandpa played by Eduard Parsehyan and Verna Sawyer played by Lili Taylor were (who I loved in this role), along with protagonist Sheriff Hal Hartman played by Stephen Dorff. But I must admit that at first glance I expected Nubbins to become Leatherface. He had the body frame to grow into it and seemed a tad off also. But alas it was not meant to be.
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Leatherface provides too many unanswered questions about the characters, like other children taken and whether or not certain characters were related. Who were Ike and Clarice, and why was Bud the only family Jedidiah claimed he had in the reformatory?
Now, what really set the Sawyers up for major confrontation was when they killed the Sheriff’s teenage daughter (the sheep’s head was really creepy). This is a fury and a hatred for them that any normal person would feel in that circumstance, but he goes a bit overboard, and it is the Sawyer family, it’s what they do. Too many questions for myself, but you be the judge.
As payback, young Jed and ALL the other children (who strangely were not in the birthday celebration) are taken from Verna and placed into the Gorman House Youth Reformatory and given new identities.
After serving ten years, young Jedidiah and another kid I assumed was Nubbins, are older and fed a cocktail of different medications to keep their aggression at bay. This is where it really begins to get confusing because Jedidiah is now Jackson, and who I assumed was Nubbins is now Bud.
After escaping the reformatory, Jackson and Bud are teamed up with Ike and Clarice played by James Bloor and Jessica Madsen, respectively, who aren’t far from the Sawyer family tree (no relation apparently). But even with all the mayhem going on in that escape, Bud still proves more worthy to the carry the mantle of Leatherface than Jackson, who chooses not to kill but does have some amazing outbursts of rage throughout the film.
Ike and Clarice are two young, sex-crazed, psychopathic killers with no remorse and no compassion for others. Ike wants to screw every girl he sees and Clarice is waiting there in the wings to kill them if she feels threatened. By this time, I didn’t know if any of these characters were related because of the whole new identity thing, plus many of them were separated so I figured they kinda came together as kindred spirits.
After finally making it home running from the Sheriff, young Jedidiah is re-introduced to his kin and to who he really is. Nubbins makes a re-emergence, but looks nothing like the chunky kid gleefully clapping his hands as they urged Jed to ‘go all Leatherface‘ on the thief in the beginning of the film.
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Now it’s the Sheriff’s turn to give young Jedidiah sort of a do-over, and finally, make his family proud as he failed to do all those years ago. “That’s how it is, for now it is, over.”