"He ain't retarded. He's misunderstood," Sheriff Hoyt Hewitt says, describing his anti-social nephew, Tommy (a.k.a. Leatherface) in this prequel to the 2003 hit remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Uncreatively sub-titled "The Beginning," this is a hardcore horror movie. It's grim, dark, and completely lacking in fun of any kind. Yet, let's face facts: it gets the job done. It's a brutal, sadistic, efficient machine, and with a title like this, you pretty much get what you pay for.
Still, I had heard some very positive word-of-mouth about the film, and expected it to be more than just better-than-average. Truth be told, it's no better and no worse than the remake of a few years back, which I could liberally appreciate on a "scary" movie level, if not the artistic level of the brilliant Tobe Hooper masterpiece from the 1970s.
This film's storyline is simple, and familiar. In July of 1969, two young good-looking couples, Eric and Chrissie and Dean and Bailey, set out on a road trip just before the boys (brothers...) are due to ship out to Vietnam. In rural Texas, however, they run afoul of the Leatherface clan. In this incarnation, the brood consists of the not-very-evil Uncle Monty, the utterly cracked Mama, and the psychotic Sheriff Hoyt. Of course, I saved the best for last: Leatherface. In this "version" of the story, the iconic boogeyman suffers from a degenerative facial disease and a "tendency towards self mutilation." We know this because we see doctor's notes (over the opening credits) describing both conditions in detail, which I think is a laugh riot. The film makes a point of noting that the family is starving, that the town nearby is dead...that things are so bad cannibalism is necessary...but we're to believe that Hoyt took Tommy to a doctor? And to a psychiatrist too? Right. "So, tell me how you're feeling today, Leatherface..."
Sometimes a chainsaw is just a chainsaw...
Watching TCM: The Beginning, I was struck that - perhaps appropriately given the grand guignol subject matter - the franchise has truly begun to cannibalize itself. This time, a lot of what gets served up to the audience is leftovers. They're piping hot leftovers, put leftovers nonetheless. From the original 1970s films, for instance, we get some trademark Hooper homage shots of road kill on the highway, shots of the glaring Texas sun gazing down impassively upon the murders, and some impressive low camera angles creeping through the high Texan grass. There's even a window-jump near the climax that reminded me of Hooper's staging, not to mention a re-invention of the famous Alice in Wonderland "tea party" dinner sequence. Only not nearly so well done.
From the remake of the 21st century, I see we get the exact same plot dynamic: Leatherface hacks up the alpha male of the group, (Matthew Bomer's Eric) and wears his face while his girlfriend watches. The final battle even takes place in the same slaughterhouse.
At this point in my review, I guess Sheriff Hoyt (played with sadistic glee by Lee Ermey...) would probably remind us, "if it ain't broke; don't fix it." I can't argue with that axiom. This movie is beautifully filmed, operatically grotesque, and like its predecessor, generous with the jolts and jumps. And yet - I guess because I'm a longtime fan of horror, and especially of this series - I was left wanting a bit more. But more on that in a minute.
Let's talk some more about what the film gets right first. Texas Chainsaw: The Beginning does evidence a strong understanding of horror and horror history. In the tradition of the original (The Hardestys), Night of the Living Dead (Barbara and Johnny...) and even Jeepers Creepers, The Beginning knowingly casts siblings as our imperiled heroes. This is important, because guilt and horror is always magnified if you're sharing it with a brother or sister. Here, that dynamic is made even more fascinating by the central situation, that of two brothers bound for the horrors of Vietnam but discovering a different brand of horror right here in the home land and instead. In horror literature and myth, we might see this co-dependency of siblings in sources like Hansel & Gretel, I guess, but it still grants the situation here a feeling of immediacy. Even if subconsciously.
Like its predecessors, this is also "road trip gone wrong" movie, and like Hooper's 1974 movie, it commendably attempts to work in some economic subtext. Here, the closing down of the local slaughterhouse has a dire impact on the town's families, and it's literally a dog eat dog (or person eat person...) world. The film also gets right the sense of total isolation in such a backwater, rural setting. "There's no help to go for," Chrissie explains to Dean at one point, and she's dead right. The line of dialogue, though it may not sound like much in the recounting, is positively chilling in the film.
This Chainsaw also understands another edict from its proud lineage: the true horror in any show like this emerges from the randomness of life. Take a wrong turn or run out of gas, and you're Leatherface fodder. Here, I particularly enjoyed the notion of army-bound brothers locked in a feud over their service, blind to the dead-end they were really driving into. Life threw them for a loop, one they didn't see coming. That's good stuff.
In the final analysis, what The Beginning, like 2003's TCM model, truly lacks is the thing that distinguished Hooper's two contributions as both works of genius and high cinematic art: black humor. A joy of Hooper's Chainsaw I and II is how he went for the gusto (remember Dennis Hopper with the dueling chainsaws in the 1980s sequel?) Today, Hollywood doesn't really value subtext or satire, and so a film like this one, though it has evidences some nice chops, doesn't ascend to the top tier of genre greats...like at least two previous entries in the franchise.
If you are inclined, after you watch this film, go back and watch the first fifteen minutes of Hooper's original. It's the scene with that unhinged hitchhiker in the van. Remember? He's a weird, Mansonite loonie, and these scenes are wrought with terror because you don't know what he'll do next. He's a wild card. The movie doesn't take the predictable road with the way the script treats him (or the teens)..and scares are generated because the audience is knocked off-guard. Likewise, in Hooper's film, he throws away traditional movie decorum and goes by the edict "no learning," which means that characters in the play don't learn from one another according to some writer's carefully constructed plot line. They just walk into that horrible farmhouse and get killed, one after the other. Again, this reflects the randomness of life. We don't always know the reasons why something happens to us, but movies - even horror movies - have the tendency to make everything neat and tidy. That works against something being truly scary.
The Beginning is not a great horror film because ultimately it would rather throw in little homages to previous entries or hew to some pre-ordained outline rather than surprise us and show us something truly spiky and original. But, the franchise must be fed, I guess. You don't go into the sixth film of a series expecting originality.
Also, you just know a movie is struggling when evil biker chicks are randomly thrown in as fodder for Leatherface. This reminded me of Friday the 13th Part III, wherein a motorcycle gang obligingly ended up in rural Crystal Lake so Jason Voorhees could murder them in horrible fashion. I'm still wondering what the bikers in this film were doing in bum-fuck Texas. (Central casting must have sent them; judging by their costumes).
Didn't they see Easy Rider?