Thundarr
Superhero
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2008
- Messages
- 7,577
- Reaction score
- 70
- Points
- 73
To say that I'm not a fan of Michael Bay or Platinum Dune remakes in general would be an understatement. However, I actually enjoyed the TCM remake and thought that it was a decent flick. Is it as good as the original, no (mostly do to the fact that it lacked the sheer balls-out insanity of the original). However, it's decently shot, decently paced, decently acted (Jessica Biel and R. Lee Ermey are particularly good), I found it genuinely creepy/unnerving most of the time, the protagonists were all likeable despite being kind of *****e (but they weren't raging unlikeable a-holes like a lot of slasher movie protagonists tend to be, so I felt bad when they died), and even the gore was used mostly effectively.
TCM: The Beginning, on the other hand, was just garbage. It was mean, ugly, hateful, and gratuitous with no context/substance behind it. It wasn't scary, it was just sick and vile, and those are NOT the same thing. R Lee Ermey was the one bright spot in that blight upon cinema.
I just watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning earlier tonight. I didn't dislike it as much as you. The main characters were a bunch of cardboard cutouts, not particularly interesting. And being a prequel, it lacked a lot of the suspense that a film like this should have (kinda obvious how it's all gonna end).
That being said, the Hewits were great as the antagonists. That was pretty much exactly how they should be portrayed, if perhaps a little more subtle in the beginning. Of course, that was the problem with making the movie a prequel. They needed to show how and why they were he way they were. In the first film they just were the way they were, and what made the film scary is not realizing that everyone in town is a part of he Hewit clan. You can't do that in a prequel format. But with Sheriff Hoyt dead and Leatherface with his arm cut off, they couldn't make it a sequel so they made a prequel instead.
Not a great movie by any means, but certainly more watchable than Texas Chainsaw 3D.