Andrew Bryniarski – Tripping Through Gateways

The very nature of a horror movie prequel is pretty bleak. If you are going back to “the beginning”, you pretty much wreck any hopes for a happy ending.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre the Beginning follows two couples. The young men are brothers, one returning to duty in Vietnam and the other joining him. Except the younger brother really does not want to go. In what seems like a small action, he starts to burn his card, but they find themselves in a car accident. Who should find them? Sheriff Hoyt. Except, now we discover that Hoyt is not the Sheriff at all. Young Thomas Hewlett went on a slaughtering spree the day they closed the only job he could love…working the slaughterhouse.

When the sheriff stops Thomas, he is killed and Hoyt took over the role. When Hoyt finds the burned draft card, he gets irate and starts torturing the brothers. One of the girlfriends got away, but the other suffers all sorts of torment. The “Final Girl” (a term used very loosely here) tries to save her friends, but the situation just gets worse, right to the bitter end. You know she cannot get away…the Hewlett’s have to make sure nobody gets away.

Everything is pretty by the book, and the film lacks any real twists, as it is super busy filling in the blanks from the first film. These were not necessary to fill in, as they were things like “How did that old guy lose his legs?” Or “How come Hoyt has fake teeth?” The answer is that everything happened in this one moment of time in the 60’s.

The cast is pretty decent, and again Ermey is disturbingly entertaining. But other then that, nothing really stands out. It is gory and gritty, taking it’s look from the previous film. But it never quite grabs the viewer in any way. The characters are under developed, and while sometimes a film can be entertaining enough to give that a pass, this is not the case here.

One interesting note is John Laroquette reprises his role as narrator again, though the film closes with his narration instead of opens with it.

People stopped trying to make sequels and the franchise looked to be quietly slipping into history. Then, in the early 2000’s Michael Bay formed Platinum Dunes and purchased the rights to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Instead of going the sequel route, Bay opted for a remake. This was also a reboot of the franchise. The film was still set in 70’s and featured a young CW TV type of cast…before the CW existed.

The film opens with the same basic narration of the original (with John Laroquette reprising his role as narrator-which is a fun reference to the original) before introducing us to a group of friends on a road trip. They pick up a hitchhiker (much like the original), a young woman who seems very traumatized (unlike the original). She kills herself, which results in the kids looking for help. They meet local sheriff Hoyt. He is gruff and seems a bit off, but it is only later the kids realized what danger they are in.

Directed by music video director Marcus Nispel (among his video work? An Amy Grant video short) the film is definitely stylish. There are all sorts interesting camera shots (one gruesome shot pulls out from the terrified friends through a head wound an out of the bullet hole of the van’s rear window). The various citizens of the small Texas Community are all slightly creepy. Every location is unnerving. The film’s color scheme causes it to feel like it could be filmed in the 70’s, giving a gritty look to the film. Nispel went on to direct the glossy Friday the 13th reboot a few years later.

Leatherface is big and imposing…and R. Lee Ermey steals a lot of scenes with a character who is like his Full Metal Jacket drill sergeant, but slightly nicer. Okay, kidding. Ermey’s Sheriff Hoyt is disturbing and genuinely frightening.

The film’s cast is actually quite good, though the central young women are overly sexualized (not a big surprise from a Bay production). The film lingers especially on shots of Jessica Biel in her midriff top (well, technically, Erika Leerhsen is in less).

This is one of those remakes that manages to be pretty decent in it’s own right. It manages to take the things that matter from the original while choosing to tell it’s own version of the story. After the first two films, this is probably the strongest entry in the franchise.

Tag: Andrew Bryniarski

Let’s Visit Texas (Texas Chainsaw Massacre: the Beginning, 2006)

Let’s Visit Texas Part 5 (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 2003)