I was honestly quite impressed with the cinematography, production, and pacing of the first half, despite the silliness of the plot that was clearly a way of setting up a smorgasbord of fodder for Leatherface. And boy does he take advantage. Though the humanization of the character was palpable and refreshing, that all disintegrates in the second half, where the movie follows every horror trope and then one-ups it with the stupidest decisions, most obvious plot holes and a laughable absence of realism. In the first half however we have your typical local hick who's expected to be one of the antagonists but lo and behold he's actually a great guy. Many of the shots, especially the scene in the sunflower field, were just shy of beautiful in a grisly way. The whole bus scene was both funny in a satirical way, disturbingly gruesome, and yet what preceded it made absolutely zero sense. If only the flick stuck to its guns with the deviations from horror norms, it could've been a solid installment in this cesspool of a series.
