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Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

Okay. Everyone’s been here and I know you’re all going to know what I’m talking about. You’ve got your circle of friends. Let’s say five or six. If you’re particularly likable or one of your five or six friends is there may be a few more. You’ve got the one or two (maybe three) friends who are kind of the studs of the gang. Then there are the lower end of the totem pole guys who are probably funnier and just as fun to be around as the officers of the circle, but these guys aren’t laying down what the ladies are picking up. Then we’ve got the few who fall in between, they’re not the head guys, but they’re not exactly the bottom-feeders either.

Even if none of this is registering with you yet, you will be able to relate to the tagalong guy, aka the weakest link guy. He’s a little nuts and more than likely socially retarded. This guy also makes a complete and total fool out of himself after a few drinks and just loves Dave and Buster’s because he hasn’t figured out that not even an arcade a few feet away justifies getting drunk at a mall. Yes, he still lives at home and no, he doesn’t realize that while it’s okay with The State of New York to date an 18 year-old when you’re 27 it is also okay to wear sweatpants in public. In this guy’s defense, he’s generous when it comes to drinks or taking one for the team when one of his friends is trying to hook up with a girl who brought her unattractive friend.

To draw a parallel, let’s say your weak link friend is a modern horror movie. You generally don’t expect too much out of him and more often than not, he does something so embarrassing that you can’t just enjoy his company. You feel like you’re watching Steve Carell on “The Office” and being around him has the very real potential to be nerve-wracking. He might talk about comic books to a girl whose number he has a faint glimmer of hope of getting, if not going home with.

Then there’s the matter of whether or not you’re going to invite him to a party you’re throwing. After all, your friend/acquaintance The Modern Horror Movie has taken dumps in your sink, pissed in your fishtank, told a girl or two you’ve been into that he thinks you’re secretly gay, unintentionally cockblocked you, got drunkenly handsy to the point of trying to feel up your girlfriend, crashed your car, pissed on your couch when he was passed out, scratched your out of print copy of Hard Boiled, and… well you get the idea.

With the initial remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, your friend The Modern Horror Movie proved that he has the potential to be not such a bad guy after all. No pets died, no major awkwardness was involved and he showed that he actually has the potential to be somewhat engaging. You now know that the possibility for good behavior was there even if the consistency wasn’t. But should you risk it again?

I say no, but I’m the type of guy to quit while I’m ahead. Sure, the worst you had to go through last time around was that drunken I love you man diatribe and half his life story. With the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you got the initial grittiness, but it was glossed over. When you got your hands down into it and eventually pulled them out they were completely clean. It was like sticking your hands in gravel—abrasive, yes and gritty too, but all you had to do was wipe your hands together and you’d never know they were in there. If you saw the original Tobe Hooper version that terror stuck with you. By the time you got that off layers of skin were missing. There was tar, hypodermic needles and hydra fangs in Hooper’s bucket. It gave you something to remember and keep you up at night.

The last thing you do is take a great boogeyman like Leatherface and give him a backstory. Faceless killers are scary precisely because we know nothing about them or their motives—because they are inhuman, pitch-black voids of emotion.

Let’s put it this way. Let’s say there’s a really cute girl you know. Not necessarily the kind of girl who has the potential to make you do bad things and abandon all reason, but she doesn’t exactly have you running away screaming out of fear of her gaze turning you to stone. And she’s got a little sister. And let’s just say their parents should’ve quit while they were ahead.

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