Like someone torturing you with a chainsaw...

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning is an additional inept Hollywood gore fest that endeavours to misrepresent itself as a terrifying horror flick. After all ideas for sequels have come and gone, Hollywood studios then move onto the prequels. The philosophy behind this prequel was ostensibly to inform the audience of the back-story of "Leatherface" (Bryniarski) who is the central serial killer in the series. Clearly, the motivation was to reveal why the cannibalistic family become the way they end up...what pushed them over the line? First of all, I must rip into the concept. Tobe Hooper's 1974 original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was absolutely petrifying because of the inability to understand the characters and their origins. Therefore with no palpable motivations, the characters are frightening. Thus revealing the genesis erases all mystery surrounding Leatherface and his family, and no longer do they possess a scary screen presence.

The second fatal flaw in the screenplay is not even fulfilling the concept! The first five minutes show Leatherface's birth, and then all of a sudden the central character is an adult chopping up meat just like he was in the predecessors. Cue the brainless, incompetently-minded characters travelling through Leatherface's region...prompt the rest of the sadistic family who are suddenly cannibals eating people, and the stage is set for a pointless rehash of the original films with a different slate of characters. This time, though, you can predict how it will end. We know the events that will unfold a few years later, thus these characters can't tell the tale to the authorities and uncover the mystery. Hence the villains won't get their comeuppance (there's no vengeance at all), and the audience are exposed to endless scenes of mindless torture.

I've basically described the film's plot, but I will elaborate further: Thomas Hewitt - a.k.a Leatherface - is born in a slaughterhouse in Texas and is abandoned in a dumpster. He is adopted into a family, and he grows up to become a worker at the same slaughterhouse. Then the slaughterhouse is closed down, with workers left unemployed. Many of the local inhabitants desert the area. The Hewitt family stays put, but are on the verge of starvation. Leatherface's deranged step-father executes the local sheriff, assumes his identity and begins running the town his cruel way. Two young couples then venture into the region and become hopelessly stranded. The Hewitt family wait...with an enormous assortment of torture tools on hand.

It's impossible to point out all the flaws evident in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. The main flaw is its nature of nothing but a mindless gore fest. The film has no problem with moving from one unnerving torture scene to the next, with blood and guts spurting all over the place: showing more inventive methods to kill a human. I know, I know - I'm supposed to praise the low-budget affair for creating an authentic atmosphere with realistic gore, blah, blah, blah! The impressive gore effects aren't a redeeming feature. As a matter of fact, there are no redeeming features at all! With all the misogynistic scenes depicting horrible torture and rape of girls, I wanted to walk out of my viewing area and keep on walking.

Tobe Hooper's original film wasn't a gore fest. There was barely any gore at all! It was scary because of what you didn't see. Of course, modern movie-goers apparently search for endless amounts of blood and gore. If it's present in action movies I usually devour the violence as it's realistic and in an intriguing context. In the context of torture it's just stupid. The film is also plagued with stupid characters and villains that are stereotyped as having the superhuman ability to pop up anywhere at any time whenever things have potential to look up for the protagonists. The film has zero scares. Instead of suspense and terror, we have lots of blood flow with an equal amount of guts. Speaking in terms of successful relentless horror flicks, something like Wolf Creek does better. Even though that's largely a relentlessly gory affair it has more skill and class. This is crap! Stupid, pretentious, tasteless crap!

1.2/10