The casting continues for the upcoming Texas Chainsaw Massacre prequel Leatherface, with one familiar and one not-so-familiar face now added to the roster. Lili Taylor, with her newfound horror mojo following The Conjuring, will be young Leatherface's mom Vera Sawyer. And newcomer Vanessa Grasse has nabbed the female lead as Lizzy, a nurse at a mental institution who's kidnapped and taken on a road trip by inmates, one of whom is our boy before the mask.
The new Chainsaw film follows 2013's hapless Texas Chainsaw 3D as the eighth film in the scrappy franchise. It's the second to be called Leatherface, following Jeff Burr's third instalment in 1990 starring a young Viggo Mortensen. It's also the second attempt at a prequel, after Jonathan Liebesman's Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning in 2006.
Like Liebesman's film, the new Leatherface is following the hulking killer's early years in the 1970s, although in this case we'll find him in his teens. It seems to be a mystery revolving around which of three teenage psychopaths - Sam Strike, James Bloor and Sam Coleman - will grow up to brain William Vail with a hammer and endlessly chase Marilyn Burns.
Jessica Madsen, meanwhile, plays another escaped mental patient. Stephen Dorff is also in the cast as a deranged Texas lawman: a Texas Deranger, if you will.
Directors Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo previously directed Inside, starring Béatrice Dalle, which is good enough to make Leatherface a more interesting prospect than it otherwise might have been. The up-and-coming Seth M. Sherwood wrote the screenplay, and production gets underway on May 18 for an expected release next year.