Movie Review: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre The Beginning

Texas Chainsaw Massacre The Beginning (2006)

Directed by Jonathan Liebesman

Written by Sheldon Turner

Starring Jordana Brewster, Matt Bomer, R. Lee Ermey, Diora Baird, Andrew Bryniarski

Release Date October 6th, 2006

Published October 7th, 2006

The title Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning is a little bit curious. Tipping the fact that this is a prequel to the 1974 original (and that films 2003 remake) removes a little tension from the films central story of four 20 somethings captured on the backroads of Texas by the family that would go on to be famous for their brutality and depravity.

If any one of these four kids were to escape from Leatherface and clan it would negate the films that follow The Beginning in the timeline. Removing the tension from the storyline leaves only the grindhouse brutality which director Jonathan Liebesman delivers by the bucketload, but in service of what.

Any one who knows anything about horror movies knows the legend of the Hewitt family. Sadistic Texas cannibals who from the late sixties to the mid-seventies prayed on people who made the mistake of passing through their god forsaken part of the Texas flatlands. Their poster boy, the maniacal Leatherface (most recently played by Anthony Bryniarski) wielding a bloodsoaked chainsaw which he wields like a butchers tool to cut human meat.

In Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning director Jonathon Liebesman gives us an origin story for Leatherface and his creeptastic backwoods family lead by Uncle Charlie (R. Lee Ermey). When the local slaughterhouse closed down; let's just say that their one employee -Thomas "Leatherface" Hewitt- did not take it well. Murdering his former employer he walked away from the slaughterhouse and into the life of a cold blooded maniac, with a little push from his equally crazed Uncle who murders the town's one and only cop when he attempts to arrest Thomas.

Meanwhile, on a lonely stretch of highway, not far from this carnage, two brothers; Dean (Taylor Handley) and Eric (Matthew Bomer) and their respective girlfriends; Bailey (Diora Baird) and Chrissie (Jordana Brewster); are on a road trip that will culminate with the brothers arrival at a military base and from there a trip to the jungles of Vietnam. What Dean, however, has not told his older brother; is that he is not planning on going to Vietnam and is in fact on his way to Mexico.

These plans take a massive and horrific detour when a biker runs them off the road and into a cow and a major accident. All four survive with Chrissie having been thrown from the car. When the sheriff shows up, now Uncle Charlie calling himself Sheriff Hoyt, he sets the tone for the nightmare to come by killing the menacing biker chick with no provocation. He then loads three of the friends into the cop car for a trip back to the Hewitt homestead and some unimaginable terrors.

No points for guessing that Chrissie will follow her friends in a vain attempt at rescue. What else could she do as a moronic horror movie character? Run until she is able to locate someone who isn't a backwoods psychopath?

This set up takes far too long to get started and by the time the carnage begins you really don't care. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning has already established itself as a vehicle for gruesome, blood soaked carnage and thus the heaping of one body atop another fails to elicit anything new aside from a minor admiration for whomever it was that had to craft that much fake blood. That was a big job.

Director Jonathon Liebesman is not without style and professionalism but his various depictions of brutality are meaningless to an audience already desensitized to such depictions by far more skillful horror films like the Saw pictures and The Descent and even less skillful exploitation pictures like Hostel or Wolf Creek which are just as bloodsoaked and even more sadistic in terms of the brutality presented.

What The Beginning needed was some tension in the storytelling. That went out the window, of course, when the producers, including Michael Bay who also commissioned the 2003 remake, decided to make a Texas Chainsaw Massacre prequel. Right away all of the possible tension as to whether the young gap models lined as cannon fodder for Leatherface might escape is gone. You know everyone is going to die; the only question is how gruesome that death will be.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning relies entirely on brand loyalty. If audiences are loyal to the Texas Chainsaw brand they will turn out for anything. The red meat promised in The Beginning is the origin of Leatherface. That, unfortunately, is not all that interesting. Leatherface was always a hulking, personality free, brute and simply showing us how he picked out that ugly mug of his, made from human flesh, is not all that compelling. As origin stories this is not exactly of mythic quality.

The one slightly entertaining element of TCM:TB is former drill Sergeant R. Lee Ermey as crazy Uncle Charlie. Ermey bites into the role with the same violent relish he brought to his foul mouthed drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. My appreciation for his work in TCM:TB is admittedly more camp than it is honest appreciation of his acting talent. I got a kick out the over the top way he played this character and how convincingly bonkers the host of the History Channel's viewer mail show could be.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning never really had a chance to be successful. With the tension sucked out by it's title and premise and only its gore to rely upon, the chances that this film had to be a compelling and truly frightening horror film were next to nothing. Director Jonathon Liebesman gives it the old college try and delivers a skilled presentation of blood soaked violence but his efforts were futile from the start.

Even diehard Leatheface fans will have a hard time finding anything to enjoy about Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.

Movie Review: Darkness Falls

Darkness Falls (2003) 

Directed by Jonathan Liebesman

Written by Joe Harris, James Vanderbilt, John Fasano

Starring Cheney Kley, Emma Caulfield, Sullivan Stapleton, Emily Browning

Release Date January 24th, 2003 

Published January 23rd 2003 

Horror films are allowed to set there own rules. Oftentimes a horror film will make up those rules as they go. However once those rules are in place violating those rules becomes one of the most disappointing aspects of that film. The latest addition to the horror genre, Darkenss Falls, sets it's own rules in the first five minutes of the film. It then sets about breaking those rules over and over again making for a maddening film-going experience.

The film begins with a prologue about an old woman named Matilda Dixon who lived in the seaside town of Darkness Falls, Maine. Matilda is beloved by the town's children because when they lost their teeth they could take them to Matilda and exchange then for a gold coin. After a fire severely burned Matilda's face she was unable to leave her home during daylight hours and when she did leave she wore a frightening porcelain mask. When two of the town's children go missing one night, Matilda is blamed and hanged but not before placing a curse on the town. The two kids were found the next day having ran away on their own.

We jump forward in time to a 12-year-old boy who has just lost his last baby tooth. The boy's name is Kyle Walsh. One night Kyle makes the mistake of looking into the eyes of the legend known as the Tooth Fairy. Now, one of the rules established early in the film is that if you looked in the eyes of Matilda's ghost she would hunt you until she killed you. Kyle's only savior is the a flashlight at his bedside. The tooth fairy is sensitive to light and when exposed is badly injured. Kyle's mother, not believing the legend, goes to his room to show Kyle there is nothing to be afraid of , and the tooth fairy slits her throat. Kyle is blamed for the murder and spends the next 12 years in a mental institute.

Cut to the present, Kyle is out of the institute but still afraid of the dark. Now living in Vegas, Kyle is on every medication known to man to deal with what he witnessed. Back in Darkness Falls, a young boy is experiencing the same behavior as Kyle. The young boy is Michael Greene and he is the brother of Kaitlin, who happens to have been Kyle's girlfriend, before his supposed psychotic episode. Kaitlin tracks down Kyle and asks for his help in treating Michael which brings Kyle back to Darkness Falls to face his fear.

Darkness Falls is a slowly paced, light-and-shadow thriller that has a few very effective moments. One that stands out is the opening ten minutes with a very well shot sequence of Kyle's mother being killed. However, after that the film comes apart, setting it's rules and then setting about breaking them, creating many a logical flaw that takes away from the film and really irks any intelligent filmgoer who is paying attention.

First, does the Tooth Fairy only kill you if you live in Darkness Falls or can you just leave and she stays there? If the Tooth Fairy can't go into the light then how is she with moonlight? If the Tooth Fairy is after Kyle, why does she kill a random drunk who was fighting with Kyle instead of going after Kyle?

Not that logic has it's place in most horror films but when rules are established in a horror film, violating those rules can be a film's biggest crime.

The film's premise is a hodgepodge of horror cliches lifted from such varied sources as Nightmare On Elm Street to the recently released They. The films biggest influence, the one it truly aspires to meet but fails to, is the moody atmospherics of a Stephen King novel. But what King is able to do with words, Darkness Falls is unable to do with images.

First time actor Chaney Kley plays Kyle and makes it look like Clonaid succeeded in cloning Mark Wahlberg. Though it's kind of like Michael Keaton in Multiplicity, Kley only got some of Wahlberg's talent and not the best of it. Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Emma Caulfield is a sexy, smart choice for a lead actress but saddled with a frightened victim role. In service of Kley she isn't given much to work with.

First-time director Jonathan Liebesman gives a good account of himself technically with an occasional scary setup but unfortunately his special effects and story are subpar. The Tooth Fairy character as created by Stan Winston's effects company is a dull recreation of horror characters past and the more screentime the monster logs, the more unscary it becomes. In interviews, the director said that the monster wasn't onscreen until the closing act but that the studio was so impressed they rolled out some cash for reshoots that bumped the films release date from mid-September to January and made the monster more prominent, which exposed it's flaws.

Whether the film was the victim of studio overkill or an inexperienced director, Darkness Falls is yet another unsuccessful horror film that strives for scares but can illicit only indifference.

Movie Review: Battle Los Angeles

Battle Los Angeles (2011) 

Directed by Jonathan Liebesman

Written by Chris Bertolini 

Starring Aaron Eckhardt, Ramon Rodriguez, Michelle Rodriguez, Bridget Moynihan 

Release Date March 11th, 2011 

Published March 10th, 2011 

The sci-fi action flick "Battle: Los Angeles" has me quite torn. On the one hand, it is a brutal exercise in poor filmmaking techniques and terrible writing. On the other hand, the chaotic intensity of "Battle: Los Angeles" builds to a surprisingly rousing conclusion that any red blooded American can only cheer for.

Aaron Eckhardt stars in "Battle: Los Angeles" as Master Sgt. Michael Nantz, a 20 year Marine veteran who has just filed his retirement papers. Sgt. Nantz is plotting life after the marines when a meteor shower begins impacting off the coast of Santa Monica. Unfortunately, these are not meteors but rather alien beings intent on war.

With forces stretched thin Nantz joins a unit led by the much younger and very green, Lt. William Martinez (Ramon Rodriguez). The rest of the unit is populated with war movie stereotypes much older than the actors playing them and is more notable for its PC multiculturalism than for any one of the performances. However, Michelle Rodriguez joins the film late and offers a dash of tough chick vitality.

The unit is tasked with rescuing civilians trapped at a Santa Monica police station. The civilians include a veterinarian played Bridget Moynihan and a father (Michael Pena) protecting his son. Two other children are present as well though the film does a poor job of mentioning who they are or why they are present.

The task at hand for the unit is laid out like a videogame and, as shot by director Jonathan Liebesman (Darkness Falls), it feels a lot like a first person shooter game. The camera whips about as if it were being controlled by a caffeine addled gamer preventing the audience from gaining any perspective on the action at hand. Audience members prone to motion sickness might want to bring medication.

The characters are mostly forgettable; the dialogue is filled with atrocious cliches and malapropisms. The film style is so hectic in "Battle: Los Angeles" that you really don't know what's happening from one scene to the next. So, you're probably wondering: What is good about "Battle Los Angeles?"

Director Jonathan Liebesman makes up for many of the film deficiencies by establishing an intensely chaotic tone that despite awful dialogue and by the numbers characters can be quite compelling. The film's final act in which Eckhardt leads a ragtag crew back into action to take out an alien outpost that controls deadly, unmanned alien drones builds to a rousing finish.

The ending takes advantage, for better or worse, of our inclination toward patriotism. If you cannot be moved by our troops at their bravest readying for the biggest battle the country has ever seen, even if it is against fake aliens, then you are definitely not the audience for "Battle: Los Angeles" which doesn't literally wave the American flag but definitely salutes.

Hectic and at times completely awful, "Battle: Los Angeles" gains its appeal from star Aaron Eckhardt who commits fully to the premise and sells you on his guts alone. He believes in the action around him and because of him you do to, sort of. Most of the movie is pretty terrible but when Eckhardt leads the final battle you will work hard not to be moved to cheer, a little.