Everyone knows I loved New Line Cinema's Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (review), but what did three of our other writers think? If you click here you can read Buzz's official review and then read on to see what Slice and Clint Davis thought of Platinum Dunes' gutsy addition to the Leatherface franchise. In 1969, two brothers embark on a road trip across Texas with their girlfriends. They soon run into trouble when they cross paths with a maniacal sheriff and are taken to a house of horrors. Within waits a man who'll be groomed to become the thing known as Leatherface.
Review #1
By Clint Davis
Rating: 5 out of 10
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.
Review/Report of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning”/”Gears of War” Match Made in Hell event in Chicago, IL.
By Slice
Rating: 8 out of 10
This Wednesday, October 4th, I had the pleasure of attending an interesting event which combined a screening of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning” which was followed up by an exclusive playable demo of the upcoming Xbox 360 first person shooter “Gears of War” on the big screen, which was pretty bad ass.
Let’s start with the movie. The newest addition to the TCM lineage is a gritty, dark, and troubling little demon of a film. Written by Sheldon Turner from a story by himself and David J. Schow and directed by Jonathan Liebesman, ‘The Beginning’ is a prequel to the
2003 remake set in 1969 in which we get to see some of the origins of the Hewitt family and a cornucopia of death and destruction. While there were a few more things I would have liked to have seen in the movie, I was overall satisfied and pretty surprised at how far they were willing to take it.
The best things ‘The Beginning’ have going for it are excellent cinematography and chilling sound design. Never has a movie containing so much death and torture looked so beautiful. ‘The Beginning’ contains the same type of stylized look that we saw in the remake, but this time with more exteriors and some different locations, everything just looks unbelievable. I even found myself stunned by how great the teen characters looked drenched in blood after their accident in the opening that is the start of their trouble with the Hewitts. In the sound department, this movie is loud, and it uses that to its advantage. Sound design is, in my opinion, one of the most important elements of a effective horror movie, and this one really gets it right. From the ear shattering decibels of Leatherface’s hammer pounding down on tables and faces, to the titular chainsaw, to gunshots and screams, everything is thunderous and unnerving.
Another area the movie really excels in is gore. It’s so damn unflinching and violent that I was seriously wondering how they got away with most of the kills. I’ll admit that I was a little resilient towards the remake for being so violent whereas the original left a lot to the imagination, but this time around I’ve realized that we’re in a whole different time now, and if you’re going to be gory, I at least hope you’re really gory. In this respect, ‘The Beginning’ does not disappoint. In terms of story, ‘The Beginning’ isn’t exactly reinventing the wheel, but I’m not quite sure if it has to. We get to see the some of the origins of the Hewitt family and then some poor young adults, two men on their way to enlist for Vietnam along with their girlfriends, fall into their trap. The story is where my complaints lie. I think the filmmakers did a good job by adding the Vietnam aspect and by choosing very pretty people to get killed in horrific ways, but in terms of what could be done with a prequel to one of the most notorious horror franchises of all time, the ball is dropped at least a few feet. We get tidbits like Leatherface picking up the chainsaw for the first time and learning more about the Hewitt’s relationship to the town they inhabit, which is very appealing, but it doesn’t get much further than that and I would have liked to see more from that angle, we are supposed to be ‘witnessing the birth of fear’ after all.
Overall, you gotta go check this one out, especially if you’re a fan of the series. It takes itself seriously, it’s very unapologetic, and it’s respectful of it’s audience; there are no friggin’ cat scares or balloons popping for jumps in this one, just faces being peeled off.
After the movie, the lights came on and the nine Xbox 360s and plasma TVs sitting right behind my seat were powered on and the “Gears of War” presentation began. The game’s executive producer, Michael Capps, was in attendance to host the event, as well as play through the first ten minutes of the story mode of the game on the big screen, which was a treat in itself. Some may be wondering why these two seemingly unrelated pieces of media were grouped together in a promotional event like this; I was wondering the same thing; but I soon discovered that the two properties have much in common.
“Gears of War”, just like TCM:TB proved to be both bloody and disgusting as well as stunningly attractive. Even beyond that, ‘Gears’ prominently features a chainsaw which Capps joked “may have been influenced by Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but no infringement lawsuits please.” The presentation started off with the first ten minutes of Story mode, which finds Marcus Fenix, a muscle-bound badass, escaping from prison during humanity’s last stand against a group of baddies called Locusts. I could go on about this stuff, but I know what you BD readers want to hear. The game, which features astonishing next-gen graphics, is friggin’ violent. About ten steps out of Fenix’s prison cell, you open up a locker to arm yourself and mangled corpses straight out of a horror flick fall out.
As you traverse through the battle-ravaged prison, there’s helicopters flying overhead and huge Locust soldiers blowing through doors and firing all kinds of guns at you. Gameplay looked very fluent and well-designed, making this a very likely candidate for the first “Killer App” of Xbox 360. After ripping through armies of soldiers in the prison with your chaingun, you hop into a helicopter and escape just as a giant nasty looking bug rips through the soil and tries to attack you. In the second level, which looks like some war-torn roman ruins (Capps commented that they went out of their way to come up with beautiful landscapes just to blow them up) we got to see an example of a chainsaw kill. When you use the futuristic-looking chainsaw, the camera switches to a side view as you literally tear your enemies in half and blood splatters all over the camera. “Gears of War”, which is shipping to stores on November 7th, 2006, seems to already have a loyal fan following despite being a new franchise; at the Chicago event there were people from all over the Midwest: Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. After seeing this demo, which later included some killer multiplayer action, I think it is all within good reason, this looks like one badass game.
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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. 
This Wednesday, October 4th, I had the pleasure of attending an interesting event which combined a screening of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning” which was followed up by an exclusive playable demo of the upcoming Xbox 360 first person shooter “Gears of War” on the big screen, which was pretty bad ass. 
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