Prequel about 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. – Source

The answer to the question posed in the title of this post is a resounding “No!” as far as I’m concerned. First of all, we already had a prequel to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE franchise with 2006’s THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING which was a pretty bad movie from start to finish. So why exactly are the folks at Lionsgate going back to this origin well after 2013’s TEXAS CHAINSAW 3-D, which also dipped it’s toe into Leatherface’s backstory to disastrous results, instead of just doing a continuation of the Leatherface saga?

The trailer doesn’t instill much confidence in me because it has me recalling the awfulness of Rob Zombie’s disastrous HALLOWEEN film’s where the filmmakers think that anyone who is a fan of this franchise is desperate to see every second of Leatherface’s life from the day he got his first skin mask to how he decided that his weapon of choice would be a chainsaw. Leaving a little mystique to these A-level slasher characters is becoming a lost art and it boggles the mind why the people behind these films think that everything about these characters needs to be explained on the big screen. And it is especially obnoxious when the same freaking franchise has already gone down this road but is doing it again. I am going to need the TEXAS CHAINSAW powers that be to start looking forward instead of constantly re-writing Leatherface’s past.

Not to be a total downer I do have to admit to being intrigued with some of the casting for this film. Lili Taylor and Stephen Dorff are two great character actors and I am almost always entertained by the work they do so I am expecting those two to elevate this film even if nothing else about it is particularly well done.