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Scary Movie Reviews
Texas Chainsaw Massacre :The Beginning
Release Date: October 6th, 2006 (wide)
Length: 1 Hr. 24 Min.
Rated: R for strong horror violence/gore, language and some sexual content.
Distributor: New Line Cinema
Starring: Jordana Brewster, Taylor Handley, Andrew Bryniarski, R. Lee Ermey, Heather Kafka
Directed by: Jonathan Liebesman
Produced by: Robert J. Kuhn, Toby Emmerich, Mark Ordesky
Written by: Sheldon Turner
Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a cult film. It has scared scores of people out of their wits. A true classic, it survives till today in the list of best horror flicks of all times.
A slew of spin offs have been made, as in the case of any successful Hollywood flick. The remakes, more often than not, have been hack jobs which are direct insults to the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Then, director Liebesman came along with a new idea. He made the Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginnnig. Quite obviously, it is supposed to be a prologue to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and showed Tommy and his humble beginnings. The fans of the original were quite intrigued by this and waited for its release. But sadly, looks like they wasted their time.
For starters, there was a lot of hype created around the film-everyone wanted to know about Tommy’s a.k.a. leatherface’s story. The plot, if you can call it that, is the same as that of any “horror” flick. Two brothers on a last road trip with their girlfriends get into an accident on a deserted highway. They come across the sheriff, who takes them home to his family. Only, he forgets to mention that they are cannibals. So how many get eaten and how many survive…that is the question.
Run of the mill story line with absolutely no build up for Tommy’s twisted mind. They make do with the Hewitt family being rather put off by the shutting down of the town meat factory. Everyone except them leave town in search of greener pastures. The person most ticked off is Tommy-the future leatherface who resorts to hacking two legged animals instead. His dad encourages the adopted son’s hobby and plays long-grabbing the sheriff’s badge and head along the way. The rest of it is a hack of the hack of the hack of the original.
The characters themselves are unimpressive and one-dimensional. While the girls only scream when they see blood, which means throughout the film, the boys run around with a worried look and hurl obscenities. There is absolutely no depth to any of the characters. The only saving grace is Lee Ermey as Tommy’s dad who does a surprisingly good job with everything working against him.
Then the gore, oh the blood. Agreed, a horror flick will have bloodshed and gory scenes, but the sight of so much of it actually makes you nauseous. Its not scary, just plain disgusting. There are no special effects or great camera angles. Guess they spent everything on fake blood to afford any other specialization.
So in a nutshell, a sheer let down. The writers totally lost out on a chance to show how or why Tommy turned into a monster. It was such a good chance, but they blew it. They used screamers, not actors to play the “leads” and spent everything on blood, blood and more of it. A rather sad movie which leaves you feeling sick and angry for not having waiting for it to come on TV.
N.B. Movie Reviews are the views of their author and not necessarily shared by EverythingScary.com
A TRUE MASSACRE
