The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

It plays better than it reviews — the watch lands harder than the write-ups suggest.

• “The whole fear-of-obese-hillbillies device is starting to smell as stale as Leatherface's playroom. Does this horror trend simply reflect a national fear, as giant radioactive ants personified the Bomb in the 1950s? If so, maybe it's time for us all to go on a diet; America needs fresh fodder for its boogeymen.”

  John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter · 50

• “Few surprises lie in store for connoisseurs of torture cinema, though unlike its 2003 predecessor, this Massacre owes less to Bay’s attention-deficient aesthetics than to the measured, Georgia O’Keefe-on-acid sensibility that guided Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel’s much-cannibalized original.”

  Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly · 50

• “Mindlessly repeats the archetypal "Chainsaw" scenario.”

  Nathan Lee, The New York Times · 50

• “"The Beginning" is a better movie than the 2003 remake, even if the plot is understandably similar. There are only so many ways hapless teens can get brutally slaughtered, after all, but Liebesman and company keep things appropriately creepy, right down to aping the look of the 1974 original.”

  Pete Vonder Haar, Film Threat · 50

• “This is not a slick, jokey horror movie in the post-"Scream" mold, but a genuine attempt to strip the coating from the audience's nerves. It's nasty and brutish, if not particularly short.”

  Sam Adams, Los Angeles Times · 50