The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

We meet our heroes/fatalities of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning poolside, with the sounds of Paul Rodgers and Free doing their upbeat hit All Right Now. When you know damn well things are not going to be all right ever again for these kids, it seems like a cool, tongue-in-cheek way to establish our intro to the iconic Leatherface character. (Never mind that that song didn't hit the airwaves until 1970, the year after the action is supposed to be taking place in this prequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.) Unfortunately, that snippet of song is where the fun begins and ends.

Eighteen-year-old Dean (Taylor Handley) is enjoying a final fling across-country with his brother Eric (Matt Bomer) and their girlfriends, before he has to serve his first tour of duty in Vietnam. Eric is a veteran, and he's going back 'over there' to watch out for his little bro. Eric's girlfriend Chrissie (Jordana Brewster) is against the war, and Dean's babe Bailey (Diora Baird) thinks… well, who cares what she thinks? She's only in this movie for her voluptuous figure and her uncanny ability to curl into a ball and cry. (I'm referring to the character, not the actor; Baird is fine when she's given a well-rounded role.)

Flashback to a dark, dirty, derelict slaughterhouse where an obese hick is giving birth to… something. It's a little Leatherface! Mask not included (yet). He's a deformed jumble, so mom tosses him into a Dumpster. Finders-keepers when Luda Mae (Marietta Marich) fishes the freak from the pungent depths and brings him home to her hubby, Monty (Terrence Evans). The dirt-poor Texans bring baby up to be just like them — his face hidden behind a partial mask (still not of the human variety), Tommy Hewitt (Andrew Bryniarski) works in the rendering portion of the plant with his adoptive dad. Things are happy as they can be when you're a mental mutant, but when Tommy gets his pink slip one day he sees red and murders his boss.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Tommy's uncle (R. Lee Ermey) is wreaking havoc with the local Sheriff. The tobacco-chewing badass gets a gold star when he murders the unsuspecting good old boy, steals his uniform and assumes his identity. You'll call him Sheriff Hoyt from now on, thank you very much.

Move it up a few years, back to 1969. The four friends are cruising through Hewitt territory. They stop at Luda Mae's country market and diner for a few essentials, catch the unwanted notice of a gang of grubby bikers, and head out on their merry way. Before long, the blood hits the fan and one of them will save face as Tommy's very first human-skin mask.

From here on out, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning is a bombardment of blood, brutality and bass. (The instrument, not the fish — even though the composer of the excellent, most chilling and memorable TCM '03 soundtrack returns here, this new music is an all-out assault on the cerebral cortex).

The cinematography is murky, and the camera ever-shaky. If the unremitting score doesn't beat your brain into migraine territory, then peering into the quaking darkness surely will. I was actually on the set of this film, and was so impressed by the minute details in every nook and cranny of the Hewitt's house of horrors… but in the finished product, the creepy kin might as well be residing in the black hole of Calcutta.

Ermey is great as the pseudo-sheriff, but he's essentially a one-note character. He was much more sinister in the TCM '03; here, he is just a foul-mouthed brute and his dialogue isn't even that catchy. I know some viewers find it unrealistic but personally, I don't mind some witty repartee between the chain of deaths (the films of Quentin Tarantino, Rob Zombie and Eli Roth, for example, are all brutal yet entertaining) — in this movie, when people aren't screaming or hyperventilating, they are spewing lines right out of Dialogue For Dummies.

The victims are typical sheep — nobody does anything different here — but at least the actors are all good in their limited roles. I definitely would have liked to have seen a lot more of the biker Holden (Lee Tergeson); why cast such a talented actor in what is essentially a throwaway role? Granted he does have a high purpose to serve, but like all the deaths in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, it's perfunctory.

The real star of the show is, or should be, Leatherface. Bryniarski brought something to the table (so to speak… and yes, there is another 'dinner scene' in this one) when he first donned the leather face three years ago, but that potential has come to practically nothing in this prequel. Despite the promise of the premise, we never get to step into Tommy's psyche. As I watched the movie I felt as little for him as I did for his victims. I know for a fact Bryniarski has a lot of personal charisma and he can act, but here I did not see any of that. Maybe we're not supposed to "like" Leatherface, but we should like spending some time with him.

I don't mind torture and gore — it's my bread and butter, after all — but simply showing unremitting violence with a few odd detours here and there (obligatory Tea Lady scene!) over the course of an hour and a half is not my idea of entertainment. The weak script is compounded by a tedium that negates any sense of suspense that might otherwise have existed.

There is a certain faction of fans who will enjoy this movie on a purely visceral level. For those who don't want to bothered with little things like story, plot, dialogue, cinematography, continuity, etc., The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning does deliver on the grue and spew. There are a few decent family dynamic scenes, and the tagline doesn't lie, so hopefully the diehard TCM fans will get what they want in this regard and be able to overlook the flaws.

In spite of how it may seem, I didn't hate this movie. I was just disappointed.

It's a shame that a movie with so much potential had to be such a letdown. There's a lot of fan-boy affection and talent behind the scenes here (the main actors, producers and director all profess an adoration of the genre). I was one of the few critics who truly liked TCM '03. While I didn't think it was particularly scary, I admired its style quite a bit and I have since gladly watched it a few more times. I also enjoyed production company Platinum Dunes' follow-up film, The Amityville Horror remake, finding it taut and scary. While I cannot continue the love train for this film, here's hoping for some good stuff in their upcoming remakes (The Hitcher, Friday the 13th).

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson