by Kevin Powers

Created on: February 06, 2007   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

My biggest problems with this growing trend of "Beginning" films and "Prequels" is that even though you're trying to explain where these menacing villians and nutcases come from you're also destroying some of the "myth" of the characters by explaining too much. They did it with Freddy in FREDDY'S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE, Pinhead in HELLRAISER III: HELL ON EARTH and the Lamarchant Configuration in HELLRAISER: BLOODLINE, Candyman in CANDYMAN: FAREWELL TO THE FLESH, and countless others and in most if not all cases they all fail to continue the dread and nihilism of the original films that spawned them. The new TCM: THE BEGINNING is no different. It tries so hard to explain how all the family members become the way they are but while doing so it fails to scare, terrify, and most of all entertain. It's a retread of most of Tobe Hooper's classic original and various other parts and pieces of the less satifying sequels.

The best part of the film is the opening sequence which depicts how Leatherface is born and gets his infamous first chainsaw but the rest of the film never lives up to its potential as it becomes nothing more than a "pretty teens being chased by crazy family" film. There's even padding of the sorts in the middle of the film, which I'm sure lengthens the film and fills out that 84 minute running time, which is too long.

If the rest of the film was half as origianl as the first ten minutes the film could've gone on to be a classic in the vein on the original A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET or even HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER.

I do credit the producers for being the first ones to get the entire family to return (for the first time) for this sequel (except for perhaps the small boy from the previous film but I guess he's someone the family acquires later on). It is this fact alone that saves the film, not to mention Andrew Brynarshi's Thomas Hewitt/Leatherface who has never been more menacing. Brynarski has truly made the character his own and having been the only actor to play him more than once the "saw" is all his.

R. Lee Ermey is, as expected, drop dead perfect as the patriarch of the family Sheriff Hoyt (although we discover this is not his real name) but having seen Ermey in the previous TCM, THE FRIGHTENERS, FULL METAL JACKET, and WLLARD (the remake), to name a few, this is nothing new for him. This was a role tallored to fit him.
TCM: THE BEGINNING is very entertaining but lacking any real originality.

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