Parents' Guide to Leatherface

When we meet Jed Sawyer (Boris Kabakchiev), the youth who will one day become the "legendary psycho killer" known as the title character, LEATHERFACE, he's being asked by his mother to celebrate his birthday by chainsawing the pesky neighbor tied up near the dinner table. Oh, and birthday cake is being served. Gentle Jed doesn't want to hurt the fellow, even as his older brothers, mother Verna (Lili Taylor), and grandfather urge him on. Grandpa gets impatient and bludgeons the dinner guest with a sledgehammer, sending blood everywhere. The sheriff (Stephen Dorff) is pretty tired of gory bodies showing up where Sawyers happen to be. But when the Sawyers deliberately drop a tractor engine on his daughter, he sends young Jed -- in the guise of protective custody -- to a psychiatric hospital, where electroshock therapy is often the featured torture-of-the-day. Ten years later, Verna has married into wealth and hired a lawyer to help her see Jed, whose name is changed to Jackson (Sam Strike). She refuses to take no for an answer and breaks into the clinic, releasing prisoners and causing a riot. Guards are knifed, and a guy's head is smashed into a window until he dies. Inmates Isaac (James Bloor) and Clarice (Jessica Madsen) steal a car and force Jackson and Lizzy (Vanessa Grasse), a nurse he saved, to come along, or else. The cops pursue but the inmates manage to shoot up a diner full of innocent people, stealing money and cars and rifles as they move along. The sheriff turns out to be pretty violently psychopathic himself, torturing the wounded Jackson and threatening to kill his only witness, the poor innocent Lizzy. A chainsaw is wielded to lop off a head and split a man in two. The crimes go unpunished in order to launch a 40-year movie franchise.