After their 2003 attempt at remaking Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and a 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror (review coming soon), Platinum Dunes gave in to fan demands and decided it best to develop a prequel to their first big hit with Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, as directed by Darkness Falls‘ Jonathan Liebesman. Of course, we all know that Darkness Falls was a horrendous piece of shit, even without the Puppet Tooth Fairy of Death, so it wouldn’t be too surprising if The Beginning was equally horrendous and shitty. Lucky us, it would seem that Darkness Falls was indeed a fluke, and that the South African director really does know what he’s doing.
After 1974’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, director Tobe Hooper quickly found himself on a bumpy road through Hollywood. Working interchangeably on schlock like Eaten Alive and The Funhouse while also developing classics like Salem’s Lot and Poltergeist, he cemented his mark while also proving himself to be a highly flawed director. Some might say he was simply given the proverbial shaft by the Hollywood system, who wouldn’t allow him the budget or creativity he required, but it’s nonetheless obvious that his talent behind the camera was like a game of throwing darts. As his career continued, this became more and more factual, with films like The Mangler and later Mortuary coming off more as meaningless drivel than the work of a master of horror. Finally, the two episodes of “Masters of Horror” he directed, which apparently gave him complete creative control, were terribly uneven, with “The Damned Thing” being laughably stupid and “Dance of the Dead” feeling like a hollow shell of another film. The man has not had a well-received career post-Chain Saw, so it only made sense in the middle of his career for him to return to his roots in 1986 with the underrated gore-com The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.