Leatherface: The High School Years
My Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The New Class review is going to go up sometime this weekend on Freeze Dried Movies but, until that happens, here it is, for your reading pleasure:
Back in 2003, when the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre came out, I was one of the louder voices of dissent against it’s very existence; my main point being: Why does this movie need to be remade? The original is easily one of the best horror films ever (debatable by some, but true in my mind at least) so why mess with perfection? After months of whining, I finally got around to seeing it and found, to my surprise, that the remake was… good. Not great, not better than the original, but still a surprisingly well-made, beautifully lensed, actually frightening film. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but there it was. In other words, they got lucky.
So why would the producers want to tempt fate a second time?
Now, making a prequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre isn’t a bad idea, theoretically. However it’s an idea that, if brought to fruition, must be done so carefully. There must be a perfect balance of new information that ties into what we already know and, of course, it must be a gory, scary good time. Also, if you’re going to purport to tell the tale of how Leatherface came to be the icon that his, then you damn sure better deliver the goods.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, unfortunately, fails on both counts.
TTCM: TB’s first mistake is its marketing. Claiming, loudly, that we’re about to “witness the birth of fear” strongly implies that we’ll be treated to the story how Leatherface became, well, Leatherface. What turned him into the psychotic madman we all know and love? What was his childhood like, what hellish torture was he subjected to, etc.? This does not happen. We do “technically” get to witness the birth of fear in the sense that we see his actual birth (which is gross) and we get a few glimpses of childhood photos during the opening credits and… that’s it. Soon after, the jeep-full of teenagers show up and we’re right back into the standard TCM fare. This isn’t a bad thing, exactly, but it’s certainly not what we were promised.
The second problem here is the lack of originality. I’ll be the first to admit that the set-up and overriding plot of the Texas Chainsaw series doesn’t really give a lot of wiggle room when it comes to fresh ideas, but the folks behind The Beginning are just being lazy. Whole scenes are lifted from the original film and from the remake, sets are reused, individual SHOTS are directly copied… it’s a greatest-hits collection posing as a new movie. The crowing moment of lax filmmaking comes during climactic moments; I won’t ruin anything, but lets just say that Leatherface seems to have had the ability to break the space-time continuum early in his career.
Despite all that, there are some things about the movie that make it, if not good, then at least watchable. Like the remake before it, The Beginning looks amazing. Somehow managing to look both grimy and slick at the same time, the cinematography is the movie’s real star, especially during the first half of the film, before the sun goes down. The horrors are surrounded by a honey-gold sunlight that makes the violence and gore all the more shocking. Also of note is R. Lee Ermey, as the psychotic patriarch of the Hewitt clan. Please note, I’m fully aware that Ermey has exactly one shtick that he pulls out to varying degrees in every single movie he’s in. What can I say, it works for me. While perhaps a bit jokey here, he’s still the most interesting member of the cast. Certainly he fares better than Jordana Brewster, who represents our Final Girl. She is easily the worst horror heroine we’ve seen since Neve Campbell’s narcoleptic turn in the Scream franchise. Brewster is the poor-woman’s Jessica Biel in a poor-man’s version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. Which was, in and of it’s self, the poor-man’s version of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Which, essentially, tells you all you need to know about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.
Back in 2003, when the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre came out, I was one of the louder voices of dissent against it’s very existence; my main point being: Why does this movie need to be remade? The original is easily one of the best horror films ever (debatable by some, but true in my mind at least) so why mess with perfection? After months of whining, I finally got around to seeing it and found, to my surprise, that the remake was… good. Not great, not better than the original, but still a surprisingly well-made, beautifully lensed, actually frightening film. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but there it was. In other words, they got lucky.
So why would the producers want to tempt fate a second time?
Now, making a prequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre isn’t a bad idea, theoretically. However it’s an idea that, if brought to fruition, must be done so carefully. There must be a perfect balance of new information that ties into what we already know and, of course, it must be a gory, scary good time. Also, if you’re going to purport to tell the tale of how Leatherface came to be the icon that his, then you damn sure better deliver the goods.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, unfortunately, fails on both counts.
TTCM: TB’s first mistake is its marketing. Claiming, loudly, that we’re about to “witness the birth of fear” strongly implies that we’ll be treated to the story how Leatherface became, well, Leatherface. What turned him into the psychotic madman we all know and love? What was his childhood like, what hellish torture was he subjected to, etc.? This does not happen. We do “technically” get to witness the birth of fear in the sense that we see his actual birth (which is gross) and we get a few glimpses of childhood photos during the opening credits and… that’s it. Soon after, the jeep-full of teenagers show up and we’re right back into the standard TCM fare. This isn’t a bad thing, exactly, but it’s certainly not what we were promised.
The second problem here is the lack of originality. I’ll be the first to admit that the set-up and overriding plot of the Texas Chainsaw series doesn’t really give a lot of wiggle room when it comes to fresh ideas, but the folks behind The Beginning are just being lazy. Whole scenes are lifted from the original film and from the remake, sets are reused, individual SHOTS are directly copied… it’s a greatest-hits collection posing as a new movie. The crowing moment of lax filmmaking comes during climactic moments; I won’t ruin anything, but lets just say that Leatherface seems to have had the ability to break the space-time continuum early in his career.
Despite all that, there are some things about the movie that make it, if not good, then at least watchable. Like the remake before it, The Beginning looks amazing. Somehow managing to look both grimy and slick at the same time, the cinematography is the movie’s real star, especially during the first half of the film, before the sun goes down. The horrors are surrounded by a honey-gold sunlight that makes the violence and gore all the more shocking. Also of note is R. Lee Ermey, as the psychotic patriarch of the Hewitt clan. Please note, I’m fully aware that Ermey has exactly one shtick that he pulls out to varying degrees in every single movie he’s in. What can I say, it works for me. While perhaps a bit jokey here, he’s still the most interesting member of the cast. Certainly he fares better than Jordana Brewster, who represents our Final Girl. She is easily the worst horror heroine we’ve seen since Neve Campbell’s narcoleptic turn in the Scream franchise. Brewster is the poor-woman’s Jessica Biel in a poor-man’s version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. Which was, in and of it’s self, the poor-man’s version of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Which, essentially, tells you all you need to know about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.
posted by Clinton at 11:21 AM
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