The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre:
The Beginning
I suppose
one could reason a need for a prequel to this film. Some
would cite money, which it will like make heaping stacks
of. Diehard fans of Leatherface may actually wish to see
the origins of the character and his family, although anyone
in that camp is sure to be disappointed here. Others would
argue that the film has been remade so many times, that
ANYTHING other than a remake would be better at this point.
I agree.
However, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
is nothing more than a remake in sheep’s clothing.
The
beginning of The Beginning, if you count the first
fifteen or so minutes of celluloid, classify as a prequel.
We see Leatherface’s mother, bloated and pregnant
while working the assembly line of the meat packing section
of a slaughterhouse. She doesn’t feel well, she stammers,
her bosses look at her quizzically, and she keels over on
the spot. As she convulses, fluids spew from her body indicating
that she is going into some sort of post-mortem labor as
baby Leatherface crawls out of his mother.
Yes,
crawls, and the rest of the film follows suit. We jump cut
into what could double as the opening credits from Se7en
– a futile attempt to tell the actual prequel depicting
Leatherface’s youth and closing with his brutally
violent vengeance on the slaughterhouse owner.
Then,
out of nowhere, we are suddenly in remakesville. Here is
the template: A group of [fill in type]
teenagers are on a road trip through Texas to [fill
in destination] when they get derailed by [fill
in type] only to find themselves the prey of a
family of cannibals. Let’s use this to compare to
the original, shall we?
1974:
A group of hippie teenagers are on a road trip through Texas
to a rock concert when they get derailed by their own curiosity
only to find themselves the prey of a family of cannibals.
2006:
A group of army drafted teenagers are on a road trip through
Texas to ship out to Vietnam when they get derailed by a
highway robbery and a cow only to find themselves the prey
of a family of cannibals.
No sir,
this isn’t a remake at all. What ensues is peppered
with plenty of gore (unlike the original) and a few surprises.
R. Lee Ermey has plenty of fun taking his drill sergeant
routine to insane levels. In fact, he is often more jumpy
and frightening than Leatherface himself, who is nothing
more than a joke in this film.
Sure,
he brutalizes plenty of people with his chainsaw, but he
is essentially Leatherface at birth and never truly transitions
into character – he already is the character. Why
anyone at a slaughterhouse would allow a huge hulking man
who wears a leather mask to come in and chop up meat with
cleavers is beyond me, and this absurdity completely destroys
any attempt at setting up backstory from the outset.
Not
to mention, if this is the prequel to the rest of the story,
then why would this family have such a proclivity to setting
up victims at a dinner table, allow them to escape, and
then send Leatherface chasing them with a chainsaw? How
many times can this sequence occur in one family’s
timeline?
Ultimately,
this film is nothing more than yet another shoddy retread
that ramps up the gore and bloodshed, but would have been
more aptly titled, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre...Again.
Rating:
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