Post by StevePulaski on Jan 14, 2013 18:50:21 GMT -5
Leatherface continues to abuse his victims into a bloody pulp in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.
Rating: ★
I feel like I'm wasting my time. I feel I spend too much time exploring the darker side of cinema, watching too many remakes, dead-end comedies, and films with an identity crisis that I'm missing the larger, more visceral, grander works of art that have become more easily accessible in today's world. Why do I waste my time with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, a film I knew going into it that it didn't have much to work with and what a slim chance it could have at succeeding? It's beginning to feel like time for a reevaluation.
This is another unnecessary addition into the endless line of remakes, sequels, spin-offs, or what have you in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, which hopefully you know originated back in 1974 when director Tobe Hooper had a vision that was unique at the time; make a gritty, incomprehensibly brutal film involving stylistic merits, artistry beneath the gore, and subtlety and suggestive camerawork throughout the entire excursion. It seems the only thing the company of Platinum Dunes, this being their second venture into this material after the depressing and vacuous film that kick-started this remake's series' success in 2003, can extract from Hooper's vision is the incomprehensibly brutal part and neglect to give the viewer any realm of thought or style within it. This is yet another stroll through the remake alleys, which is sadly one of the most profitable alleyways in cinema as of now.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning is a prequel to that 2003 film I just mentioned, and this brings me to the first point; why make a prequel to a horror film in general? Obviously you know the characters are doomed from the start, if the killers lived "x" amount of years to exist in the previous installment. There's no suspense at all, except for the times the film chooses to erect some elements of it, which, believe me, are few and far between. It reminds me of Vacancy 2: The First Cut, a prequel to the somewhat-of-a-success film from 2007, which suffered from the same thing. The obligatory outcome and the lack of suspense created.
But here, we almost feel we are getting a remake of a remake. The Beginning does nothing but give us more tireless gore, sickening meanness, guttural behavior, empty-hearted, lackadaisical material we received in the 2003 film, just now burdened with the gimmick of being a prequel. This happens a few years prior to the original, in 1969, focusing on two brothers Vietnam and their girlfriends, who are traveling with them as moral support (or added victims) to watch the one reenlist and the other act like he is going but will really dodge the draft at the last second to be with his girlfriend. While this needless pot boils, we then see a carbon-copy, listless biker chick tail them angrily for no reason at all, forcing them to crash on the side of the road in a bloody, heavily-damaged wreck.
Who arrives but the corrupt sheriff from the first film, Mr. R. Lee Ermey reprising his role as Sheriff Hoyt (R. Lee Ermey), who we see just how he became the sheriff he appeared to be in the original film prior to this setup. Hoyt arrests all the kids, except for one who is ejected from the car and hiding in the high grass, and takes them to his house where the mutilation and torture can begin, when they can be hopefully be finished off by Leatherface, the madman who, you know, is the antagonist and all.
The problem with The Beginning is it disposes of all its good ideas too early, similar to Rob Zombie's Halloween, which would follow a year later. We are given solid footage trying to assemble a backstory on the characters of the deranged Hewitt family and how Sheriff Hoyt became a sheriff, but after about five minutes of that, the remaining hour and a half is the same cookie-cutter, unambitious drivel we were given in the 2003 remake, all capitalizing on murky settings, annoying characters, brutal murders, and everything in between.
To go on with this any longer is meaningless. Those who want to see it for the murders and gore will and I wish them a good time. Those who have no plans to give this undeserving prequel a watch will go on unharmed. I suppose everyone wins in a sense, but when we need to talk about "winning," per say, when watching or contemplating to view a needless prequel to a shallow remake of a classic horror film, we've worked up quite a paradox over something that should be shunned away like nothing happened. I return to the idea I introduced in the beginning of this review and believe that I should begin to seek out cinema of a higher power and the kind that leaves a greater impact on its viewers.
Starring: Jordana Brewster, Taylor Handley, Matt Bomer, Diora Baird, Lee Tergesen, and R. Lee Ermey. Directed by: Jonathan Liebesman.