Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning Blu-ray Movie Review

But how did Leatherface get his chainsaw?

Reviewed by Brian Orndorf November 2, 2013

I’m not entirely sure what the point of a horror prequel is. The genre is dependent on scares to transmit its experience, to use shock as a method of suspense. Yet, with a prequel, there’s no reason to get excited about the story because, after all, we all know who lives and who dies. It’s a toothpaste-back-in-the-tube situation that would take remarkable moviemaking skill to transform into a nail-biting effort. With “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning,” we’re faced with Jonathan Liebesman, the helmer of “Darkness Falls,” “Wrath of the Titans,” and “Battle: Los Angeles.” Not exactly a stunning resume. A 2006 prequel to the 2003 remake, “The Beginning” fulfills its titular promise by detailing how Leatherface found his chainsaw, how Sheriff Hoyt came across his law enforcement uniform, and how Monty Hewitt lost his legs. You know, burning questions horror geeks have been dying to see answered. The uselessness of this feature is astounding, emerging from the smoke and sweat as an obvious cash-grab from producers caught off-guard by their own success, unaware that forward, not backward, is the proper direction to take with a simplistic blood-smearing series such as this.

In 1969, Eric (Matt Bomer) is driving brother Dean (Taylor Handley) across the country, with the pair off to join the fight in Vietnam. Confessing his hesitation to girlfriend Bailey (Diora Baird), Dean intends to burn his draft card and escape to Mexico, while Eric plans a future with love Chrissie (Jordana Brewster). When a biker attempts to rob the pair while out on the interstate, a car accident with a wayward cow cripples their transportation, ejecting Chrissy into the tall grass, safely out of view. Picked up by Sheriff Hoyt (R. Lee Ermey), Eric, Dean, and Bailey are returned to the Hewitt household, home to a cannibalistic clan who’ve recently become the last residents of the area. Struggling for survival, the innocents are subjected to torturous treatment from Sheriff Hoyt and his adopted son, Thomas (Andrew Bryniarski), a disfigured, mentally challenged man looking to sew together the flesh of his victims to build a perfect face. Chrissy, monitoring the nightmare from afar, attempts to figure out a way to rescue her loved ones before it’s too late.

“The Beginning” actually opens in 1939, where “Tommy” is born on the floor of a slaughterhouse, quickly and cruelly tossed into the trash due to his hideous appearance, rescued by Luda Mae (Marietta Marich) and taken in by the Hewitt family. Instead of allowing the future Leatherface the dignity of a shadowy past, Liebesman and screenwriter Sheldon Turner gift his origin story a sympathetic edge, turning the spazzy fiend into a bullied, abandoned boy with a cleft lip, raised to butcher anything in his way, completely submissive to his barbaric clan. Not only does this revelation strip the menace off a terrifying movie monster, it’s also painfully derivative, attempting to rebrand the character as a Jason Voorhees-type of ghoul, building a foundation of dispiriting circumstances to motivate the madness.

Equally as absurd are attempts to highlight how characters established in the 2003 film came to be, with Turner taking valuable screen time to work through unnecessary explanations. The prequel almost seems geared to focus on Sheriff Hoyt and his dogged sense of punishment and humiliation, finding Ermey to be the unofficial star of “The Beginning,” with poor Leatherface pushed to the background, truly joining the festivities midway through the movie. Ermey’s chewy and threatening, but a little of the character goes a long way, making the picture feel unfocused as it tries to figure out who should rightfully stand as the true maniac of the effort.

The rest of “The Beginning” is standard slasher fare, executed without emphasis by Liebesman, who relies on surprisingly unmemorable gore zone visits to hold attention. Considering that faces are peeled off, legs are removed with a chainsaw, and cannibalism is on the menu, “The Beginning” is dull, paging through the Horror 101 textbook as young, pretty things are hunted and destroyed by large, ugly things. Characterizations are tepid, offering a test of patriotism as the men mull over their Vietnam duty, a plot point later exploited by Sheriff Hoyt, who served in Korea, thus increasing his resentment and, ultimately, viciousness when it comes time to tenderize the draft dodgers. Performances match the feeble scripting, finding Brewster an uninspired choice for the heroine, lacking the type of screen presence the part requires.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The AVC encoded image (1.78:1 aspect ratio) presentation aims to preserve a sickly color palette as a way to covey the discomfort of the past, leaving the image with a brownish green coating that's successfully translated to BD, but never pleasant to watch. Bloodshed allows for flashes of deep reds, which are welcome in an essentially monochromatic feature like this. Evening sequences look a tad boosted, lacking a hearty depth of black, while some contrast issues slacken the firmness of fine detail. Facial textures and gore zone visits are handled well, giving off the feel of flesh, sliced or otherwise. Skintones are acceptable. Print is clean, without any hint of wear and tear. Grain is erratic but adequate, retaining the movie's interest in a retro look.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The 5.1 DTS-HD MA sound mix carries an expected sense of suspense, with a rumbly low-end that compliments the on-screen action, giving what passes for tension here a healthy presence. Scoring also contributes to the listening experience, offering leadership with a fresh frontal push, occasionally spreading out in a circular manner. The surrounds provide a small amount of directional activity, but there's a nicely enveloping sense of atmosphere to share, with dripping water, open air, and echo carrying distance. Dialogue does appear dialed down a touch to allow horror stings a shot at surprise, requiring a little extra juice in the center channel. However, performances are never lost, along with surges in the communication of pain.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with director Jonathan Liebesman and producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller is a comfortably informational chat with the trio, who immediately delve into the extensive reshoot challenge that brought the movie to life after a disappointing first cut. While play-by-play is a nuisance, the participants are mindful about pointing out details of the frame, exploring creative motivations and a general need to goose horror elements as quickly as possible. The tone is celebratory, without necessary distance, but the basics are covered with directness.

• "Down to the Bone: Anatomy of a Prequel" (45:00, SD) is an extended look into the picture's development and shoot, broken up into five featurettes. Despite its attention to the details of filmmaking, this is hopeless EPK fluff, with cast and crew interviews fawning over the particulars of the prequel, while treating the 2003 remake as some type of classic just because it cost next to nothing to produce and did well at the box office. The highlights of the collection are peeks at BTS footage, grasping the on-set experience as bodies are pummeled and sore throats are triggered by endless screaming. The rest is just filler, spending more time trying to sell a movie than dissect one.

• Deleted Scenes (13:11, HD) include a brief shot of Sheriff Hoyt scaring off a pack of bullies, extended poolside time with Chrissie and Eric while Dean and Bailey debate their future inside a hotel room, various bits of tension featuring both the family and the hunted, and a few variations on the ending. They can be viewed with or without commentary from Liebesman, Fuller, and Form.

• And a Theatrical Trailer (2:28, HD) is included.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

"The Beginning" attempts to build suspense by including the interests of a biker gang out to reclaim one of their own, and there's more than enough time spent with the Hewitts as they go about their daily business. Urgency is not encouraged, though to be fair to Liebesman, it's nearly impossible to work backwards in horror. The audience knows at the outset that Sheriff Hoyt will survive and Leatherface will rise again, leaving the unknown to expendable characters perhaps better off as ingredients for suppertime stew. Even taking into consideration the frightfully low standards of horror, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning" is barely making an effort.