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.
Jigsaw is dead. Amanda is dead. Jeff is dead. Detective Tapp is dead. Detective Kerry is dead. Detective Matthews is dead. Rigg is dead. Agent Strahm is dead. Who the fuck am I supposed to care about now? Oh, the new and slightly pudgy killer Hoffman and Jigsaw’s ex-wife Jill you say? Fan-fucking-tastic.
Meh.
In his third and final outing as director for the series, Darren Lynn Bousman took on a script by Feast writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan to continue the series while leading it in a new direction. What they created was a gory, fast-paced thriller that marked a beginning to the second Saw trilogy, while shedding light (and a shitload of blood) on Jigsaw’s past.
When the cheaply-made Saw II made bookoo bucks at the box office, it was only logical to assume the sequel was on it’s way. Again it was rushed into production, this time already outfitted with Darren Lynn Bousman as director and writer, with the aid of the first’s James Wan and Leigh Whannel. This collaboration marked the end of what some might call the Saw trilogy and to many more, the end of their quality.
After the success of Saw on the festival circuit, Twisted Pictures and Lionsgate decided to sign a writer and director for a sequel as soon as possible. Taking aside filmmaker Darren Lynn Bousman and his oft-denied script The Desperate, James Wan and Leigh Whannel offered to produce his idea with a few changes under the Saw II title. Bousman accepted the offer and, along with Whannel, rewrote his script and signed on as director. The rest is (Saw franchise) history.
The Saw franchise started out as the Little Engine That Could and quickly morphed into that fucking train that makes you late to work. Starting out as an indie flick produced by Twisted Pictures and based on a previous short by director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannel, Saw was a low budget film starring two actors near the death of their careers and a whole lot of cheap sets and creative set pieces. It’s surprise success began one of the most ridiculously fast strings of sequels ever seen, as well as a resurgence for the previously obscure torture sub-genre.
I didn’t think it could happen. It really didn’t seem possible. I… I literally can’t believe it’s actually happened. When I entered that dark room to see it, I thought “there’s no way, no way it could be as bad as…” and I banished the thought from my head. It simply wasn’t conceivable. Yet here I sit in the backstage of a community theater on this cold and rainy night, able to confirm the unimaginable. The remake of The Stepfather is worse than Stepfather III.
The difficult part of writing a review for Stepfather 2 was that it was pretty much the same quality as it’s predecessor. Sure, it had more budget constraints and a different storyline, but they shared most of the same attributes. So, when I began watching Stepfather III, I was happy to find that I wouldn’t have to deal with that problem again. Because it sucked. It really, really, REALLY sucked. Damn.