There is an idiom about the way a human being feels painwhen a surge comes, it makes a brief period of time, sometimes only a matter of seconds, feel like an unbearable eternity. Sometimes situations like a pulled muscle or a banged kneecap are hard to endure without just a minor yelp of protest.
The same idiom can be applied to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning," a film that runs 84 minutes, but is packed with so much gratuitous meat, gore, slime, urine, drool, grime, screaming, agony, sadism, misogyny, and outright misanthropy that it feels like 10 hours 10 long, extremely unpleasant hours (and that's putting it generously). This is the most uncomfortable 10 hours (I mean 84 minutes, sure...) I've ever spent in a darkened theater. "The Beginning" is not only a repulsive film within the horror genre (which has been on a rapid downhill slide some are calling a "renaissance")it could very well be the worst film I've ever had to misfortune to waste my cash on. Period. By the time the credits roll, you'll officially know how Marsellus Wallace felt in the basement of that pawn shop.
I have seen many horror films in my quarter-century on this earth, from early black-and-white classics, '60s kitsch, gritty '70s realism (including Tobe Hooper's original "Chainsaw"), '80s slashers, '90s badness, and a healthy dose of uber-gory European selections from the likes of Fulci, Argento, Pasolini, Deodato, Buttgereit, etc. I'm far from a prude when it comes to cinematic violence, and it takes a lot to offend my otherwise salivating horror sensibility But "The Beginning" is absolutely wretcheda rock-bottom low in horror and film in general. If ever there was a case where I would put my stamp of approval on the protest, censorship, banning, or outright incineration of a film into the stratosphere so that it may never be viewed by human eyesand I am usually against such thingsthis would be it.
This is a film that produces zero scares, but an overflow of disgusting, artless imagery wrongly assumed to BE scary. Its villains are grotesque, unfunny inbred sickos, and its 'heroes' (including 2 guys who resemble Christopher Atkins and Robby Benson, and their girlfriends, with less definition than their Gap-model looks) exist only to have all manner of beating, torture, and mutilation inflicted upon them. Chainsaws and other sharp implements are plunged into flesh in gory close-up. The Vietnam War is cynically exploited to analogize two characters "coming of age" and "becoming men" while suffering the torments of the savage Hewitt clan (also given an un-ironic layer in R. Lee Ermey's war veteranship). In a slasher film where the overriding intentions appeal only to the basest, most reprehensible urges in man, trying to infuse "commentary" into the proceedings comes off as profoundly as a monkey reaching for guano.
Like so many low-budget horrors of the 1950s-'70s, the title of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" was a misnomer. The film featured a handful of deaths, only one of which was committed with the titular weapon (and, even then, only shown a few drops of blood); the movie was an absurd comedy of sorts, shrouded in a gritty, documentary-style realism that fueled the terror brewing beneath. There's a good word: "terror." Hooper's 1974 original is, as others before me have said, brilliant for what it doesn't show; it created a terrifying atmosphere and utilized locations and techniques that made the events seem very real. By comparison, the 2003 remake was slick, overproduced, and took the carnage of the title quite literally, offering little more than a plot less torture show, and "Beginning" takes that nihilism to a whole new level.
This time around, it's the subtitle that's misleading, as any insight into Leatherface (oh, excuse me"Thomas Hewitt")'s madness is limited to a gratuitous shock-prologue and vague flash-cuts over the opening credits. "The Beginning" then dives into a story we've all seen too many times before. To those who have seen the 2003 version: it's the same thing. And to those who haven't, it can be summed up as simply as: 2 young couples relentlessly tortured for 84 minutes by a family of cackling psychopaths.
Seriously, that's all there is. It's a nihilistic, grueling, and utterly unredeemable excuse for inflicting pain under the banner of "horror," when it is really anything but. (If Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes company has proved anything to the world, it's that he hasn't the foggiest idea how to scare people.) Horror's recent shift toward hard-R films where dismemberment and gore are the order of the day ("The Devil's Rejects," "Hostel," etc.) has been a thorn in my side as of latenot that I have any problem with these elements of horror, but that few filmmakers know how to back up their excesses with a good, scary story. The underrated "Wolf Creek" is as grimif not morethan "TCM: The Beginning," but at least gives us a trio of realistic, likable characters whose side we are squarely on, counterbalancing the actions of the psycho terrorizing them; evil is not vanquished, but, at the end, there is a faint sense of hope regardless. "The Beginning," in all its proudly repulsive glory, gives us villains who aren't served a lick of justice, and heroes who, by the insulting, sick-joke climax, have all met with the service end of Tommy Hewitt's 'saw.
It's not an ironic sort of injusticeit's merely depressing and infuriating. 'Irony,' in this case, would be knowing that "High Tension" was threatened with an NC-17 while this geek show passed through the ever-astute MPAA with an easy R. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning" shook my soul with ragea truly vile, worthless bit of cinema with no redeeming qualities. If ever there's been a reason to abort a worn-out franchise, this is definitely it.
The same idiom can be applied to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning," a film that runs 84 minutes, but is packed with so much gratuitous meat, gore, slime, urine, drool, grime, screaming, agony, sadism, misogyny, and outright misanthropy that it feels like 10 hours 10 long, extremely unpleasant hours (and that's putting it generously). This is the most uncomfortable 10 hours (I mean 84 minutes, sure...) I've ever spent in a darkened theater. "The Beginning" is not only a repulsive film within the horror genre (which has been on a rapid downhill slide some are calling a "renaissance")it could very well be the worst film I've ever had to misfortune to waste my cash on. Period. By the time the credits roll, you'll officially know how Marsellus Wallace felt in the basement of that pawn shop.
I have seen many horror films in my quarter-century on this earth, from early black-and-white classics, '60s kitsch, gritty '70s realism (including Tobe Hooper's original "Chainsaw"), '80s slashers, '90s badness, and a healthy dose of uber-gory European selections from the likes of Fulci, Argento, Pasolini, Deodato, Buttgereit, etc. I'm far from a prude when it comes to cinematic violence, and it takes a lot to offend my otherwise salivating horror sensibility But "The Beginning" is absolutely wretcheda rock-bottom low in horror and film in general. If ever there was a case where I would put my stamp of approval on the protest, censorship, banning, or outright incineration of a film into the stratosphere so that it may never be viewed by human eyesand I am usually against such thingsthis would be it.
This is a film that produces zero scares, but an overflow of disgusting, artless imagery wrongly assumed to BE scary. Its villains are grotesque, unfunny inbred sickos, and its 'heroes' (including 2 guys who resemble Christopher Atkins and Robby Benson, and their girlfriends, with less definition than their Gap-model looks) exist only to have all manner of beating, torture, and mutilation inflicted upon them. Chainsaws and other sharp implements are plunged into flesh in gory close-up. The Vietnam War is cynically exploited to analogize two characters "coming of age" and "becoming men" while suffering the torments of the savage Hewitt clan (also given an un-ironic layer in R. Lee Ermey's war veteranship). In a slasher film where the overriding intentions appeal only to the basest, most reprehensible urges in man, trying to infuse "commentary" into the proceedings comes off as profoundly as a monkey reaching for guano.
Like so many low-budget horrors of the 1950s-'70s, the title of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" was a misnomer. The film featured a handful of deaths, only one of which was committed with the titular weapon (and, even then, only shown a few drops of blood); the movie was an absurd comedy of sorts, shrouded in a gritty, documentary-style realism that fueled the terror brewing beneath. There's a good word: "terror." Hooper's 1974 original is, as others before me have said, brilliant for what it doesn't show; it created a terrifying atmosphere and utilized locations and techniques that made the events seem very real. By comparison, the 2003 remake was slick, overproduced, and took the carnage of the title quite literally, offering little more than a plot less torture show, and "Beginning" takes that nihilism to a whole new level.
This time around, it's the subtitle that's misleading, as any insight into Leatherface (oh, excuse me"Thomas Hewitt")'s madness is limited to a gratuitous shock-prologue and vague flash-cuts over the opening credits. "The Beginning" then dives into a story we've all seen too many times before. To those who have seen the 2003 version: it's the same thing. And to those who haven't, it can be summed up as simply as: 2 young couples relentlessly tortured for 84 minutes by a family of cackling psychopaths.
Seriously, that's all there is. It's a nihilistic, grueling, and utterly unredeemable excuse for inflicting pain under the banner of "horror," when it is really anything but. (If Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes company has proved anything to the world, it's that he hasn't the foggiest idea how to scare people.) Horror's recent shift toward hard-R films where dismemberment and gore are the order of the day ("The Devil's Rejects," "Hostel," etc.) has been a thorn in my side as of latenot that I have any problem with these elements of horror, but that few filmmakers know how to back up their excesses with a good, scary story. The underrated "Wolf Creek" is as grimif not morethan "TCM: The Beginning," but at least gives us a trio of realistic, likable characters whose side we are squarely on, counterbalancing the actions of the psycho terrorizing them; evil is not vanquished, but, at the end, there is a faint sense of hope regardless. "The Beginning," in all its proudly repulsive glory, gives us villains who aren't served a lick of justice, and heroes who, by the insulting, sick-joke climax, have all met with the service end of Tommy Hewitt's 'saw.
It's not an ironic sort of injusticeit's merely depressing and infuriating. 'Irony,' in this case, would be knowing that "High Tension" was threatened with an NC-17 while this geek show passed through the ever-astute MPAA with an easy R. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning" shook my soul with ragea truly vile, worthless bit of cinema with no redeeming qualities. If ever there's been a reason to abort a worn-out franchise, this is definitely it.