Haven’t people learned that psychos live out in the middle of nowhere? If they would just avoid country roads, we would avoid unnecessary movies like this.

There’s no reason to have faith in prequels.

Prequels are pretty much guaranteed to be uninspired and bland. The origins of a film series and the characters in it never really need to be addressed.

Since we already know what happens in the first film, the prequel just tells the audience extraneous information that often doesn’t increase understanding of characters or their motives. Instead, characters and stories become much less interesting with a prequel because the filmmakers end up recycling the same story.

It should come as no surprise that “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning” holds to that standard. It’s bland, uninteresting and uninspired.

A prequel to Tobe Hooper’s 1974 masterpiece is unnecessary. There have already been many sequels and a remake. Not a single one is nearly as shocking as the original. Their plots have all followed similar lines, and the series has become redundant.

It almost doesn’t have to be said that “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning” is about two brothers and their girlfriends on a road trip across Texas. Set in 1969, one brother is a Vietnam veteran who is going to re-enlist, while the other has been recently drafted but is thinking of riding out the war in Mexico.

Their girlfriends are essentially set pieces and don’t contribute to the story until the end of the movie.

Of course, a car accident is the impetus for the violence that ensues. It’s always a car accident out in the middle of nowhere. Haven’t people learned that psychos live out in these places? If they would just avoid country roads, we would avoid unnecessary movies like this.

We all know they’re going to die. It just becomes a question of when and how.

If you want to see a movie where the forces of good and evil are so diametrically opposed on a basis of beauty, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning” is the perfect movie. The protagonists are beautiful, while all the bad guys are ugly. The only way you could fail to make the distinction between good and evil is if you had no imagination whatsoever.

But that’s the story with “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning” as a whole. It’s so unimaginative that it’s clear it was made just to turn a buck. There are some moments of brutal violence, but none of it seems new. The characters are uninteresting with the exception of R. Lee Ermey as Sheriff Hoyt.

Ermey has a penchant for playing truly sadistic characters, and he does just that here. Even so, since Ermey is so often typecast, his performance isn’t much of a surprise.

New Line Cinema is laughing all the way to the bank with this one. “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning” is just another franchise horror flick released just in time to make some money off Halloween. It would be unreasonable to expect anything more.

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