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.
