The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning is a prequel to the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The film follows the origins of the character Leatherface (played by Andrew Bryniarski), and simultaneously deals with a group of so-called characters you don’t give a shit about as they try to survive Leatherface and his villainous family. I want to start with positives. R. Lee Ermey plays Laetherface’s father, and he’s great in the movie. He genuinely comes off as a threatening villain when he needs to. So, that was what I liked. Everything else just falls flat. The gore is there for the sake of gore. This is a movie that revels in the fact that it is vile, disgusting, bloody, and gross. I am not someone who takes issues with blood and gore by any means. This was too much even for me. The opening of the movie shows the birth of Leatherface in a slaughterhouse, and it shows the full birth in detail. The character development is thin to the point that these cardboard cutouts feel like they are far from actually being characters. The actors aren’t the worst, but they almost all fail to stand out among the pack. For this reason, I can’t bring myself to care or even feel invested when horrible things happen to our “heroes” in the movie. It also doesn’t help that there is no such thing as a fucking likable character in this piece of shit. Everyone has to be a bitch, an asshole, or a douchebag. This is something about horror movie remakes I never understood. It doesn’t make the characters more relatable. The fact that this movie is a prequel really hurts this movie too. If you saw the previous movie, you know exactly who is and isn’t in it, so that ruins the surprise. The editing in this is awful. It will cut from scene to scene, and it is almost always jarring. It literally cuts from as gruesome to death to the introduction of the main “protagonists” of the movie without warning. It makes transitions like this regularly throughout the movie. I hate the cinematography too. It has this butt-ugly snot-yellow look to it for most of the movie. Half the time, you can’t make out what’s even happening. The ending tries to pay homage to franchise as whole, but all that really does is make it feel legitimately insulting. This is one of the ugliest fucking things I think I have ever had the misfortune to watch. It isn’t the worst movie I have ever seen, but definitely is one of them. Even the great R. Lee Ermey couldn’t save this movie.

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