Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

You would think that after a glowing review for the Texas Chainsaw remake, I would be looking forward to reviewing the next movie in the series. Well I wasn’t, because I knew what would happen. Instead of a sequel following up with the farm clan we all know and love, we got a prequel purported to show the family in its roots. And if there’s anything I hate more in any movie genre, it’s prequels. Why? Because unless there are some clever twists we don’t see coming that can link to the future movies, most tension and surprises are out the window since we know which characters must survive. That, and the downfall of taking the mystery out of characters and backstories. I’ve always been a huge proponent of less is more…and explaining too much can take away a certain allure. As it is, I was hesitant to view this because knowing the ‘prequel’ element I was prepared to be only mildly entertained. Was I right? TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING gets back R. Lee Ermey..the franchise’s secret weapon. And Andrew Bryniarski makes a pretty compelling Leatherface, so we have that going for us. As it is though, it still tries to explain too much (for my liking) when they could have tweaked the script just a tad to make it an official sequel. However, all is not lost. We still get entertaining kills, entertaining gore, and the new cast isn’t too terrible. Color me surprised, but I did enjoy this more than expected. They could have easily gone the sequel route, removed the prequel ties, and it would have made for a better kick-ass entry. We still get a similar tone to the first, so they were smart about that. If you were a fan of the remake, check this out for more sadism and Sheriff Hoyt. Just ignore the prequel stuff and try to view as another outing.

SLASH SCENE: ‘Draft Dodging’ yelling by the Sheriff

SLASH SCALE: 3/5