Director: Jonathon Liebesman (Wrath of the Titans, Darkness Falls)
Piegonhole: Horror / Teen Slasher/ Torture-porn
In a Nutshell: This is a direct prequel to the 2003 Michael Bay remake version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It serves as an origin story to the Hewitt family, and basically how they came to be the cannibalistic, mass-murdering white trash we have previously encountered.**spoiler alert** The film opens with a woman giving birth to a deformed baby onto the floor of a nasty looking slaughterhouse where she was just working. A little later another filthy looking girl with no shoes is seen trash picking at the slaughterhouse and finds the baby in a dumpster wrapped in butcher paper. She picks the baby up, names him, and takes him home with her to raise as her own. The baby, of course, will grow up to be Thomas "Leatherface" Hewitt.
30 years later we see adult Thomas (Bryniarski) working in the same slaughterhouse from earlier, but that it is being shut down by the Health Department due to its putrid conditions. After being dismissed by an assistant manager, Thomas decides to crush his boss' head with a sledgehammer. We then see him pick up a chainsaw on his way out of the building.
The local sheriff named Hoyt is alerted about Thomas' attack so he goes to the Hewitt farm and has Charlie Hewitt (Ermey) come with him to assist in the arrest. Hoyt exits the police car to confront Thomas in the middle of street, but Charlie comes up from behind with a shotgun, and kills the sheriff. Charlie and Thomas take Hoyt's body back to their house, and butcher his body to eat. Charlie cleans up the uniform and informs the family at dinner that he is assuming the mantle of Sheriff Hoyt, and the Hewitts will never go hungry again, as they begin to feed on Hoyt's remains that were stewed - implying that Charlie will now lure and kill people, using the sheriff uniform as a disguise, so that they can all eat human flesh.
So enter our protagonists - two brothers, and their 2 girlfriends are travelling across Texas and are unfortunately going to become victims of the Hewitts. They have a car accident after a female biker pulls a gun on them driving up a 2 lane road. The biker is killed immediately upon Charlie's arrival at the scene - he shoots her. The other four end up back at the Hewitt's farm and spend the rest of the afternoon/evening being tortured and eventually killed by Charlie and Thomas. The biker's boyfriend also gets mixed up in the foray and gets chainsawed in half, as well. We also learn that Thomas is not a great doctor.
What was lame:
- This did not really feel like an origin story. There was no transformation of any of the Hewitts from working class Texas folk to mass-murders, it's more like they were portrayed already this "way", we were just being shown some of the victims.
- The 4 "kids" - (character names) Chrissie, Bailey, Dean and Eric were not really memorable, nor were they portrayed as likable, in my opinion.
- There were too many moments were it appeared that the kids could have escaped their confines or "fought back" at times, but chose not to. It felt like the characters on screen were just going through the motions almost resigned to their oncoming demises. I should note that Dean (Taylor Handley) does die fighting with Thomas helping Chrissie, and that it actually appeared as if Chrissie (Jordana Brewster) had a real shot at getting away near the end, but Thomas dispatches her too.
- There was very little in the way of plot and nothing new was brought to the Texas Chainsaw mythos. This film relied almost exclusively on the torture and killings to fill the minutes.
What worked:
- For a prequel/sequel it did not disappoint as far as gore and splatter.
- The film has a very good soundtrack and score.
- We learn how Charlie lost his teeth (it was not from neglect), and how Uncle Monty lost his legs (he should have gone to the doctor).
- Bryniarski is a physically intimidating presence as Thomas/Leatherface, and filled the scenes he was in perfectly for a horror movie character. I wish just a little more focus could have been put onto his character.
- The scenery looked hot, dirty, and vile, so I have to compliment the production crew for that.
Recommendation: If you watched the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, then should probably see this. It can still work as a standalone, purely as a splatter film- there is nothing that goes on that the viewer would not understand. 'R' rating is for heavy violence, languague, and gore. There is an 'unrated' cut that is 7-8 minutes longer than the 'R' version, it just has more on-screen carnage.
Extras:
- MPAA had originally rated it 'NC-17', so 17 scenes had to get cut/edited to get to an 'R' rating
- there were no plans for a sequel to the 2003 TCM remake, but fan interest and contacting the producers spawned this installment
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