Leatherface is cut from the same cloth as such monstrous slashers as Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers, but unlike all of them, he’s never received a proper on screen origin story. That’s changing with the new prequel film Leatherface, and judging from the new trailer, he had one messed up childhood.
The newly released trailer begins on a couple driving down a country road when they narrowly miss what appears to be an animal in the middle of the road. When they get out to investigate, they release it’s not an animal, but a redneck kid wearing a dead cow’s head as a mask. From there, we see glimpses of young Leatherface’s disturbing home life as he’s removed from his twisted mother after she gives him a man to carve up with a chainsaw for his birthday, placed in some kind of institution where he leads a gruesome rebellion, and eventually embraces his new identity by admiring what looks to be his first ever human flesh mask. In between there’s lots of killing and chainsaws, all of which looks like it will add up to an especially creepy entry in the long running franchise.
The film is the eighth entry in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre film series, but the first chronologically, and canonically the third. The movie is a prequel to the 1974 original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and is also being produced by some of the same people who made that movie’s 2013 still-canon sequel, Texas Chainsaw 3D. The film is the feature-length American debut for French horror film directors Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, who previously were attached to reboots for Halloween and Hellraiser before leaving both projects. We think they made the right choice for their big coming out party.
Leatherface will be released on DirecTV on September 21 before a limited theatrical run and wide on-demand release on October 20.
