Leatherface

Starting out in 1954, the story follows the Sawyer family, a rural Texas band of miscreants and murderers. When a cop's daughter is killed by one of the family, the child culprit is taken away and put into a home for disturbed youth. Cut to ten years later, and new nurse Lizzy (Vanessa Grasse) is assigned to the disturbed teens ward. When the Sawyer family matriarch Verna (Lili Taylor) causes a riot during a visit, several of the inmates escape, taking Lizzy with them as a hostage. One of the escaped mental patients will grow up to become Leatherface, the mask-wearing, chainsaw-wielding terror of the earlier films, but which one will it be: volatile Ike (James Bloor), hulking idiot Bud (Sam Coleman), or troubled nice guy Jackson (Sam Strike)? Also starring Stephen Dorff as a violent cop, and Jessica Marsden as another homicidal escaped inmate.

There's a lot wrong here, from the easy-to-guess "mystery" of who will become Leatherface (a transformation that doesn't take place until the movie's final 10 minutes, so be forewarned), to the many anachronisms for a story supposedly taking place in 1964. The production values are low, and you don't have to look at the minor cast credits or crew listings to guess that this was made on the cheap in Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, to be specific). There's some bloody gore, but not presented in any original or at least humorous way. The acting is all barely serviceable, with Dorff turning in another loathsome jerk role, and Taylor seriously slumming as the killer family boss. This is the eighth movie in the series, although most of them are unrelated, with perpetual reboots, prequels or just dismissal of previous films the norm.