MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE ALIEN VS. PREDATOR

Yeah, the October Foyeurism is a tad late but I have a good excuse - a little film called THE MARINE that wasn't scheduled to come out until mid-October. I knew one way or another that it was going to make for primo material and did it ever. I already had two other reviews good to go and in waiting, I ended up going from two reviews to three reviews to four reviews, so this month's you get four reviews for the price of one Foyeurism and all of them are recent theatrical films. Don't expect the next Foyeurism until sometime between Thanksgiving and the beginning of December. In addition to this you still got my blog, my Dread Central stuff, and the updates to both the Archives and Links page to occupy your time. Until next time, can your heart withstand the onslaught of schlock that is…

 

TEXAS COVENANT MARINE: THE WICKERING

 

"You won't see me."

I went into World Wrestling Entertainment's latest foray into moviemaking with absolutely no expectations of seeing a good movie. I went in expecting (and hoping for) an enjoyably mindless retro-style action flick, preferably of the "so bad it's good" variety like WWE's wrestler-starring slasher flick SEE NO EVIL from earlier this summer. As bad as SEE NO EVIL was, it was still better at being a mindless retro slasher movie than THE MARINE is at being a mindless retro action flick. This thing is just stupendously lame (That's lame with a capital L-A-M-E!), hopelessly so, and if you've seen the trailer for the film or any of the fluff packages WWE has aired on their programming to promote it then you've already seen the highlights of the film: pretty much all the explosions, the best parts of the freeway chase (the only halfway decent action piece in the whole film) and the best moves from the fight scenes.

The opening title sequence - worthy of a massive spit take in its own right - seemed to be setting the tone for what should have been a campy b-grade sliced of ham-fisted action moviemaking. A blue backdrop, a superimposed American flag waving, the title THE MARINE appears with John Cena in his military dress uniform standing right next to it, the music swells and Cena salutes us, the audience. Given how lousy the movie to follow would be I think he should have at least followed up that salute by giving us a "Godspeed." We deserved that much.

WWE wrestler John Cena, here playing the goofily named marine sergeant John Triton, is introduced saving the day in true Golan-Globus fashion. Iraqi insurgents are holding some American soldiers hostage in Tikrit; little did they count on WWE's Doctor of Thuganomics to show up playing army of one. He dispatches them with such ease that I imagine he, and he alone, could defeat not only the entire Iraqi insurgency, but the also the entire Iranian and South Korean armies as well. Yet somehow, for some reason, his actions here will result in the end of his military career.

Why is John Triton booted from the Marine Corps? Good question, and if anyone has the answer, please let me know because I seemed to have missed something. His commanding officer, almost on the verge of tears, gives him his discharge papers and calls him one of the finest marines there's ever been. Something about being kicked out of the marines for violating a direct order. The only thing I can figure is that by single-handedly wiping out half the Iraqi insurgents in Tikrit in order to rescue those captive soldiers and then wiping out the other half during the getaway (off-camera, but implied), the United States military decided they needed to get rid of John Triton for making the rest of military look bad by comparison.

Triton returns home to the loving arms of his blonde bombshell wife Kate (Nip/Tuck's Kelly Carlson, in a rare fully clothed role) and a cushy new security guard gig at some fancy corporate office building. He's fired the same day after a run-in with the unruly ex-boyfriend of an office worker that results in a lot of glass getting shattered. It's an odd scene because everyone involved seems to be playing it for laughs - except Cena. Also, do angry jilted boyfriends that show up at their ex-lover's place of employment to yell at them usually do so accompanied by a pair of henchmen?

In order to cheer Beefy McDischarged up, Mrs. Triton decides that the two of them need to go on a romantic weekend getaway somewhere in the mountains, woods, wherever of South Carolina. This will lead to a bizarre conversation in which John tells how his dad used to take him and his brother to the mountains as kids that seems to imply that their dad used to beat them. Say what?

Meanwhile, ex-Terminator and Fox Mulder replacement Robert Patrick plays Rome, who leads a gang of thieves on a million dollar diamond heist that ends in some dead bodies and a ridiculously massive CGI-heavy explosion.

Both the Triton's and the murderous thieves will arrive at a gas station in the backwoods of South Carolina at about the same time. One thing leads to another and the whole damn gas station gets blown to kingdom come. Despite having killed everyone that's crossed their path, suddenly Rome decides they could use a hostage, no particular reason why. That hostage, of course, happens to be Mrs. Kate Triton. Unfortunately for them, John Triton is a marine and marines are so tough that not even blowing up an entire gas station around them is enough to stop'em.

For the record, there's hardly a single scene in THE MARINE that didn't have a song playing or an intrusive musical score. Novice director John Bonito tries to use this loud music as a substitute for genuine excitement or suspense but it's always too overwrought given the tepidness of what's on-screen. The orchestral score swelling as the tension builds just before chaos erupts at the gas station; the soundtrack to a Godzilla flick is more subtle.

Bonito's use of slow motion will also prove to be nothing short of criminal.

It can't be a good sign when the director of your movie looks like Lorenzo Lamas' lovechild

Random observation: every time someone in the film is shown reading a magazine it's always the same issue of Men's Health - even a chubby guy is reading it.

John Triton gives chase in a police cruiser that must have also once been a marine since it's able to withstand taking about 40,000 rounds of ammo and keep going. The bad guys will think they've finished off John Triton for a second time, but, unfortunately for them, John Triton is a marine and marines are excellent high speed drivers, capable of escaping undetected from burning in mid-air vehicles amid heavy gunfire from point blank range, and can hold their breath underwater for an insurmountable length of time.

The bad guys then decide to try and lose the police by hightailing it through the swamp. Unfortunately for them, John Triton is a marine and nobody can escape from a marine, not even in a swamp. Actually, Triton just keeps running in the right direction until he happens upon a clue that helps him realize he really has been running in the right direction. John Cena is shown running through the swamp so much that there are moments when he looks like a backwater Forrest Gump.

Since the filmmakers apparently came to the decision that this band of murderous diamond thieves just wasn't enough, a brief subplot that's the very definition of extraneous is tossed in. Triton inadvertently stumbles up a drug lab out in the swamp run by a pair of big burly rednecks - one white, one black, both looking as if they could have been contestants on that Battle of the Tough Guys show from Hulk Hogan's movie debut NO HOLDS BARRED. The Dudley Boyz do succeed in knocking Triton out and tying him up in their lab (More than the actual villains of the movie ever do!) only to have him quickly layeth the smacketh downeth on this lameth subplot, and in a shocking turn of events, it does not culminate in a massive explosion. Triton is then off and running, back in pursuit of his wife's kidnappers without even bothering to take one of these drug dealers' guns with him. Who needs a gun when you've got a knife? He's a marine dammit!

By the way, he got that knife from one of the dead thieves who Rome kills out in the middle of the swamp for absolutely no reason whatsoever. No reason at all, he just shoots the guy dead and lets some alligators chew on the corpse.

The increasingly buffoonish thieves take refuge in an empty swamp bar until Triton shows up. For a few minutes, THE MARINE turns into a slasher film, only it's the bad guys that keep venturing outside the shack in the woods one-by-one to get killed off by the knife-wielding hero. After another pointless subplot quickly plays out, Rome and his girlfriend/henchwoman get away with the hostage wife, and yet more things go kaboom. Unfortunately for them, John Triton is a marine and marines can outrun and out jump any explosion imaginable, and can easily navigate a boat on a river to pursue people escaping via car on land on roads that he cannot see. Folks, he's tracking a vehicle he cannot see traveling on roads away from the water BY BOAT! Just take a moment to let that sink in.

I realize this is supposed to be a check your brain at the door type of movie and I did just that, but THE MARINE is such an affront to human intelligence that even my hollowed out cranium rebelled against the level of idiocy that I was witnessing. Such a pity the lameness of, well, everything about THE MARINE nullifies such tremendous moments of so bad its goodness.

Indeed, Triton boatjacks a police boat in order to pursue the remaining baddies that are still holding his wife hostage long after they've had any logical reason to continue doing so. This movie is so inept it doesn't even have a scene where the bad guy tells the good guy to give up or he'll kill the good guy's wife and bear in mind this is a movie that's all about the good guy not giving up because the bad guys have kidnapped and may very well kill his wife.

The finale will show us that John Triton is also wood-proof and sledgehammer-proof, in addition to already being bulletproof, fireproof, explosion-proof, fist-proof, speeding car-proof, etc. As one-third of the state of South Carolina explodes in a series of massive natural gas tank explosions, John Cena and Robert Patrick engage in a hardcore deathmatch barely even worthy of a Sunday Night Heat main event.

All the while they're slugging it out, poor Kate Triton finds herself trapped inside a runaway semi-rig that's already on fire from having survived setting off one massive natural gas tank explosion and keeps on truckin' all the way into the river even after ramming into and exploding about a dozen more massive natural gas tanks. I guess that semi-truck must also have been a marine at some point because it too was unstoppable and impervious to fire and explosions.

This movie really should have been called MASSIVE EXPLOSION: THE MOTION PICTURE. I'm fairly positive THE MARINE set a record for the sheer number of massive explosions that an action hero is shown running or jumping away from in a single film. Heck, when John Cena isn't outrunning a fireball, Robert Patrick is calmly walking away from one. The impending DVD release needs a special audio commentary track that's nothing but the sound of fire crackling.

Kids, stay out of South Carolina because everything there is highly combustible!

Imagine my disappointment that the abrupt finale didn't have Mr. & Mrs. Triton, hand-in-hand, having to run away from a giant fiery explosion. Or better yet, have had the Triton's post-ordeal embrace interrupted by the cops arresting John for manslaughter. Have it be revealed that the cop Cena boatjacked and left handcuffed facedown out in the swamp got ate by an alligator or something. Now that would have been a great ending. Instead it just ends, abruptly so, having decided that it might as well just end since there was no one left to kill and nothing left blow up.

As I initially feared upon hearing this film had been cut down from an R to a PG-13, the rating really does hurt things since most of the bad guys are dispatched in a violent manner, at least its implied that they're dispatched in a violent manner. Producers realized that the only possible chance this movie had to make its money back was to make it accessible to the 13 and under year-old boys that compose most of Cena's fanbase. In cutting it down, the way the violence is edited prevents you from ever getting much of an idea what's happening - a constant problem throughout the film. Almost all of the hand-to-hand combat scenes are filmed in such extreme close-up that you cannot make out much of the action. It makes the fight scenes appear virtually incoherent.

As for John Cena the actor, I thought the Rock gave a horrible performance in THE SCORPION KING only to prove to be pretty good actor come THE RUNDOWN, so I suppose there may still be hope for John Cena, assuming he gets another chance at movie stardom. Cena's not outright terrible but he's certainly not good either. He mostly runs around looking like a jacked-up Matt Damon until the action kicks in, during which constantly makes this face that I swear made him look like a live action version of the Matt Damon marionette from TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE.

MAAAAT DAAAAMON!

What's really amazing is that there seemed to be a concerted effort on the part of the filmmakers to make absolute certain to strip John Cena of any personality. Cena isn't the big star he is in WWE because of his in-ring skills or his muscular physique or for being some stone cold bad ass. Cena's shtick is being a wise-crackin', hip-hoppin' Marky Mark persona and half the audience regularly boos him out of the arenas despite him being the good guy. That fact alone should make you question why WWE would gamble on a $25 million movie (Sure doesn't look like it cost that much though) banking on the popularity of a wrestler - excuse me, sport entertainer - that half the WWE audience cannot stand. I understand this movie was originally written with Stone Cold Steve Austin in mind but that still doesn't excuse the filmmakers going out of their way to reduce John Cena to just being a big muscled-up lunkhead so stone-faced that he makes Dolph Lundgren seem like Jackie Chan by comparison. The biggest part of Cena's wrestling act is his smart ass putdowns of his opponent and yet the screenplay never even lets him so much as get off some one-liners after taking out a bad guy. 90% of Cena's dialogue consists of rudimentary variations of him reciting his name, that his wife has been kidnapped, or that he's going after the guys that took her. If WWE was going to produce a movie starring a wrestler as a lead character this lacking in the charisma department I don't see why they didn't just cast Charlie Haas.

Given the amount of no-selling John Triton does, I'm surprised WWE didn't cast The Undertaker instead of Cena. Nothing typifies this more than when the bad guys blow up the gas station he's in. How does John Triton survive this? Does he duck behind something? Does he take refuge in the store's freezer or some safe room? Does he escape out a window or a backdoor? Nope, he just survives the explosion. He gets blown back by the fire and afterward everything around him is either reduced to ash or is seriously charred; he, however, comes away completely unscathed, not even lightly singed. Triton just jumps right up no worse for wear and begins chasing after the bad guys. Later on, he'll get hit across the back of the head with a 2x4 so hard that the damn thing will explode into splinters across the back of his skull. He'll be knocked unconscious just long enough to get tied up. Two minutes later, he's again no worse for wear and beating the snot out of more bad guys. It's kind of hard to care about a hero's peril when he can do no wrong and feels no pain. It's not even a case of John Triton being this ex-marine that's using his military training to survive and hunt these guys down; it's just a case of this being a moronic action movie and he's the friggin' Terminator. I know that guys like Stallone and Schwarzenegger made a career playing this sort of superhuman beefcake action hero but THE MARINE is too lame and too dumb, and Cena just isn't that convincing in the role on unstoppable asskicker. COMMANDO 2, this is not.

Now that's what I call an explosive fart!

And if you think Cena's the movie's master of no-selling then you should see his movie wife. Kate Triton is repeatedly punched in the face by both men and women, kneed in the face, thrown about all over the place, trapped inside a flaming truck that crashes through multiple natural gas tanks causing even bigger explosions - all of this and yet her make-up never so much as smudges: no bruises, no blood, nothing.

By the way, what a waste of Kelly Carlson; she has nothing to do but be a hostage waiting to be rescued. You come to realize that the only reason they took her hostage was so that Cena would have a reason to go after them. There's no other logical reason why dragging this woman kicking and screaming with them through the swamps of South Carolina would ever do them any good.

Perhaps the biggest problem with THE MARINE - aside from the lackluster action, horrendous dialogue, bland acting, miniscule plot, non-existent character development, etc - are those bad guys that the screenplay can't decide as to whether they are supposed to be threatening or stupid. The film wants to have it both ways and it doesn't work at all. Robert Patrick starts out as this cool bad ass sociopath, but shortly thereafter, in keeping with current WWE booking philosophy, the top heel is turned into this comically inept doofus that we're still supposed to take seriously. Its one thing for the main villain's henchmen to be incompetent goofs (and believe me, they are) but the main villain should at least be allowed to maintain some sense of menace (and dignity). A perfect example of this is a painful attempt at comedy where Rome starts hitting on Mrs. Triton; a scene played as such a broad attempt at humor that the music accompanying it is straight out of a Looney Tunes cartoon - I kid you not.

Hey, it's not my name above the title so why should I give a crap?

The biggest WTF?!?! bad comedy moment comes when one of Robert Patrick's goons suddenly volunteers a story about being molested by a camp counselor as a kid and given the look on his face and the tone of his voice; it's obvious that he enjoyed this molestation. I mean WTF?!?!

You usually don't see a movie break character this badly just to work in some sub-moronic that isn't written or directed by Stephen Sommers. The only people the film never allows to say something ironic or funny are Mr. & Mrs. Triton. The bad guys are portrayed as such a bunch of smart mouthed ass clowns compared to perpetual damsel in distress Kate, and her humorless, two facial expressions, personality-deprived husband to the point of it almost feeling as if the heroes and villains are operating in two entirely different movies: one an action comedy and the other a serious action thriller.

As ultra generic, uber lame, full of mundane action, and loaded with the sort of retarded humor that makes you a little embarrassed to be watching it, all would be well and good with THE MARINE if it at least lived up to its 80's action flick camp potential. But no, it rarely rises to the level of camp. It's just a really, really, really bad movie and a rather lackluster one to boot.

I joked that Vince McMahon wants to become the new Golan-Globus. I now feel the need to amend that to Vince McMahon wanting to become the next Uwe Boll.

Some sacrifices must be made, huh? Yeah, I watched it.

I remember sitting there in the empty theater for the final showing of THE WICKER MAN on a Monday night, looking around them dark, gloomy theater and thinking to myself, "I could die right here, right now and they'd never find me." I could fall dead, face first on the floor, and they wouldn't know it for hours.

The original THE WICKER MAN is a cult flick I haven't seen in so long I can barely remember anything about it aside from the famously memorable ending. I suspect this unnecessary remake is also destined for cult status, but for more dubious reasons. This remake of THE WICKER MAN is a bad movie - a terrible one actually - yet one I still found it to be quite watchable primarily because I just wasn't sure what the hell it was I was watching. Surreal horror? Mystery thriller? Satirical dark comedy? Insane ramblings of a committed misogynist? All of the above? Maybe writer-director Neil LaBute will treat us with a commentary track for the DVD that explains just what the hell he intended for this film to be, but until then the only thing for certain is that this remake is precisely what Roger Ebert would describe as the sort of really bad movie that can only be made when a lot of talented people get together to make a film that totally misfires. This remake not only misfires, it ricochets off the walls.

So pagans worship giant effigies of Herman Munster?

Nicholas Cage is a highway cop emotionally traumatized by a fatal accident in which a mother and young daughter he pulled over got creamed by a swerving 18-wheeler. Actually, the mother got creamed; the daughter just sort of sat in the backseat where she stared at Cage rather unemotionally until the car exploded.

Still out recovering from the emotional trauma of this incident, Cage receives a mysterious letter from his ex-fiancé - who had just up and left him out of the blue many years earlier - saying that her young daughter has gone missing, she suspects an abduction, and she desperately needs him to come to the island commune where she's been living to unravel the mystery. Why she didn't just come right out and tell him that the little girl is his daughter was a mystery I kept waiting to be unraveled since it's fairly obvious that's where things were headed from the moment he looks at the picture of the girl that came in the letter. The script still decides to wait about an hour before finally revealing the obvious.

So Nic Cage has been summoned to The Shire, although this Shire isn't in Middle Earth or inhabited by Hobbits. This Shire is located on a remote island off the coast of Washington State and is populated by women who are the very epitome of what Rush Limbaugh is talking about when he refers to "Feminazis."

Neil LaBute is a filmmaker who specializes in making movies about the war between the sexes that don't paint a particularly rosy picture of either, womankind in particular. This remake of THE WICKER MAN is the sort of movie that couldn't have been the way it was without the person responsible for it having some serious issues with the ladies. This thing has a misogynistic streak running through it like the Mississippi River.

It also suffers from an uneasy duality in the film's tone. One moment things were trying to be mysterious and sinister and yet there seemed to be a constant air of whimsy to the proceedings with Nic Cage riding about the narrow pathways of this seemingly tranquil island on an old bicycle, questioning these emasculating banshees about their secretive ways. I'd dare call it frothy. Pulling off those dueling tones requires a delicate balancing act; THE WICKER MAN is a seriously unbalanced movie.

That Nicholas Cage has been cast as the down-to-earth everyman outsider having to contend with the strangeness of this cut-off from the rest of civilization island society of pagan-worshipping alpha-females is also a primo example of poor casting. Cage is supposed to be the normal guy. Nic Cage: normal guy - I don't think so. This is the guy who has made a career playing quirky oddballs and in real life named his newborn son Kal-El after Superman's Kryptonian birth name. Normal has left Nic Cage's building. Here Cage is supposed to be playing the sincere cop trying to unravel a mystery, all the more determined to do so because he's haunted by the memories of that dead girl. That would be all well and good except Cage brings his usual quirky mannerisms to the part and at times plays his police inspector to an almost Dan Akroyd in DRAGNET level of parody; often beginning every line of questioning by whipping out his badge as if he were Joe Friday. Just the facts, creepy ma'am's.

Another fact: when in doubt, toss in a pointless dream sequence. THE WICKER MAN is full of doubt. There's like a dream sequence occurring every ten minutes and none of them generate any suspense, add an extra layer of surrealism to the proceedings, advance the plot, or make any damn sense whatsoever. They only accomplish two things: padding out the running time and making us all wonder if the first ten minutes of the movie served any purpose other than give the filmmakers an excuse to do all these annoying dream sequences.

It's nice to see the fish people from MOM & DAD SAVE THE WORLD are still getting work

The question perplexing Cage is whether or not there really is a missing girl and, if so, is she alive or dead; and what's all this talk about making a sacrifice in order to appease their harvest goddesses? The way it plays out makes this is a mystery worthy of an autistic Scooby Doo episode and LaBute can't even be bothered to explain certain aspects of the mystery. A good portion of the female populace is identical twins. Why so and the significance of it is never even discussed. The role of men as second class citizens seems like a key sticking point that's barely even touched upon. Why Cage is never able to get a cellphone signal out yet suddenly receives an in-coming call at a key moment, a moment that leads to absolutely nothing - it's enough to make your brain tap out.

Nic Cage is also highly allergic to bee stings. Guess what the top crop produced on this island is? The inclusion of the bees is really a bad attempt at being metaphorical, and that scene in queen bee Ellen Burstyn's villa where Cage opens a door to find it empty save for a naked girl covered in bees... I tap.

Cage is outraged when it's revealed that these psycho pagan women had set this whole thing up as a convoluted ruse to learn him to the island willingly - a bylaw of their particular brand of paganism that requires human sacrifices to come willingly to their death even if they aren't a willing participant. Hey, I told you this movie was convoluted. Always nice when the big twist at the end just confirms your suspicions that the preceding two-thirds was a colossal waste of time. Why they didn't just get on with it the moment he arrived instead of prolonging the charade for a few days is another unanswered question. An even bigger unanswered question is why did the women kill that pilot for daring to bring Cage to the island even though it was all part of their masterplan plan to begin with?

Braveheart's fairy godmother

As I've always said, Wiccans are just hippies gone goth. The women of this colony are just pagan hippies that prance about like angry Wiccan feminists high on ecstasy. Viewers of the movie may also feel like they're high on something when they watch this climax. Ellen Burstyn in face paint, dancing like a wavy gravy hippie, leading a pagan parade of women and children in animal costumes while Nic Cage begins bicycle-jacking women at gunpoint, karate kicking Leelee Sobieski in the ovaries, and running around in a full body bear costume, punching the crap out of random women... You don't see stuff like that everyday. I haven't even mentioned Nic Cage - his legs broken - being dragged along in a huge sack to be burned alive inside the giant wicker man, the whole time screaming, "You bitches! You bitches!" You don't see that every day either.

All I can really say about THE WICKER MAN is that I look forward to when Neil LaBute decides to remake INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS. That seems like the logical next step for him.

Why does "Lightning Crashes" by Live play in my head whenever I look at this poster?

Let's be honest for a sec. Michael Bay is really only good at three things: blowing shit up on film, screwing every wannabe starlet willing to open her legs for him, and producing completely unnecessary remakes of classic horror films. In other words, if you're Michael Bay, life is good, and if you're a fan of cinema, life sucks. In addition to producing a remake of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and now this prequel/sequel, Bay also can lay claim to having been the producer of that AMITYVILLE HORROR remake that stunk up theaters last year like so much rotten meat, and his production company, Platinum Dunes, plans to give the needless retread treatment to FRIDAY THE 13TH, THE CHANGELING, NEAR DARK, and THE BIRDS. Hearing that Michael Bay intends to produce a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's THE BIRDS sends the same shiver of disgust down my spine as hearing that Roland Emmerich was to be involved in a remake of ROSEMARY'S BABY. It's just wrong on countless levels.

So here we are now with TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING. "The unnecessary prequel to the unnecessary remake" would be my suggestion for the film's tagline but the marketing folks opted to go with "Witness the Birth of Fear" instead. Now since Platinum Dunes couldn't do a straight sequel since just about the whole crazy cannibal Hewitt clan ended up dead at the end of the remake with the exception of Leatherface, who only lost an arm, the Hollywood braintrust decided that they'd give us a prequel explaining to the world just how Leatherface became Leatherface. So what makes the chainsaw buzz? Here it is in a nutshell.

Leatherface was born in 1939 after his obese mamma gave birth to him and died on the floor of the slaughterhouse she worked at. As often happens in the real world when such a tragedy occurs, the plant foreman merely tosses the disfigured newborn out into the trash with the rest of the unwanted meat shavings. That baby is then discovered by a member of the Hewitt clan digging through the plant's dumpsters in search of some free discarded meat to snack on. She takes him home and names him Thomas. Witness the birth of fear, eh? It seems fear's biological father was plothole.

Jump forward thirty years to 1969 where future Leatherface Thomas Hewitt now works as the world's biggest half-masked, semi-mongoloid, slaughterhouse attendant. Sure, the whole movie is supposed to be about how Leatherface became Leatherface but who really cares about the first thirty years of his life? If the movie wastes too much time on stuff like, oh, I don't know, backstory that might cut into some valuable chainsaw massacring time later on. Besides, it's a movie about the origin of Leatherface and surely nothing of relevance happened in those formative first thirty years that couldn't be summed up in an opening credits montage of old photographs and what not.

The whole town has died off, and when I say died off, it appears they literally bulldozed the whole place off the face of the earth except for the Hewitt's home, the meat packing plant, and a gas station. The Hewitt's are the only family that hasn't left and turned proof of their existence to dust. The meat-packing plant is finally being closed for good, a move that would seem long overdue since the community built around it no longer exists and it only seems to have three employees left. Thomas doesn't take well to being laid off and proceeds to pulverize the plant manager with a sledgehammer. Immediately afterwards, he eyeballs a series of blades used in the slaughterhouse and settles on his future trademark. For the lack of that chainsaw catching Thomas Hewitt's eye this franchise could have gone down in movie history as the TEXAS SLEDGEHAMMER MASSACRE or TEXAS BUTCHER KNIFE MASSACRE, neither of which have a good ring to 'em.

And had Thomas Hewitt not had that epiphany later on where he realized that he could cut off another human being's face and sew it into a mask to replace the piece of cloth currently hiding his disfigurement, horror movie icon Leatherface would most likely have been forever known as Scarf-Face. That really doesn't have a good ring to it either.

On one side: Thomas "Leatherface" Hewitt. On the other side: TNA wrestler Abyss. Is someone at Platninum Dunes getting ideas from watching wrestling, and if so, will their ill advised remake of THE BIRDS feature a special appearance by Koko B. Ware?

Thomas picks up the chainsaw and casually begins walking down the dusty road home. Soon after, the sheriff - the last cop left in this abandoned stretch of Texas dustbowl - arrives at the Hewitt's home, which looks to have always been a squalid hellhole, to inform R. Lee Ermey of the murder his nephew just committed and to request his assistance in apprehending the "big retard." Somehow this cop managed to drive from the slaughterhouse to the Hewitt's house without ever spotting the seven-foot tall, three hundred plus pound man with the chainsaw larger than the average midget slowly walking down the side of the road. He does, however, spot him the second time around, and given the direction young Thomas is walking in, it appears the poor boy either has no sense of direction or had decided to head back to the plant in order to trade in the humongous chainsaw for something a little less ungainly to wield.

The apprehension doesn't go as planned when R. Lee Ermey shotguns the sheriff and steals his identity as the only local law enforcement. The newly dubbed "Hoyt" vows that his family will never leave their ancestral dump of a home and that he'll never let his family starve again. Oh, and that people make for good eatin'.

Instead of Leatherface's origin story, the first half of the film is basically a "what if" scenario contemplating what if Sgt. Hartman had survived getting gunned down in the bathroom by Pvt. Pyle, went back home to Texas after getting discharged from the marines, and became a cannibalistic police impersonator with an intense hatred for bikers and draft dodgers. Although, his intense hatred for disrespectful anti-authority types rings a bit hollow seeing as how he blew the sheriff's head off and took the guy's place without giving it a single thought. And it's a good thing for the Hewitt's that the last cop in town had no family or law enforcement ties that will ever inquire as to his whereabouts or that no other law enforcement in the area will ever notice there's a new sheriff in town driving the same police cruiser the other guy never turned in before vanishing into thin air.

PLOTHOLES: THEY'RE WHAT'S FOR DINNER!

Nobody else in the Hewitt family seems to bat an eyebrow at the notion that their stew meat was made from the sheriff. Maybe they just like pork? RIMSHOT~!

Meanwhile, a foursome of good-lookin' young twenty-something's are passing through this abandoned stretch of Texas dustbowl when... Ah, screw it... You should know how this works by now.

In their quest to make a few more dollars by squeezing this franchise for every last penny its worth with this misguided prequel it becomes obvious that no one over behind it ever realized that demystifying an iconic horror figure like Leatherface does more harm to the franchise than good. I don't know about the rest of you but I've never been able to look at Darth Vader the same way after learning that he was nothing more than a whiny pretty boy who got upset because the other Jedi didn't give mad props to his metaclorian supremacy and were wrong to expect him to live up to that vow of celibacy he took upon becoming a Jedi; and, lest we forget, he had frequent nightmares too. Boo hoo; poor baby. Finding out that nonsense takes away from the character of Vader in much the same way that learning that Leatherface is the way he is for no other discernable reason than him being a mentally deficient oaf whose lifetime of being picked on by others because of his facial disfigurement combined with his love of meat-cleaving and the goading of his batshit crazy uncle led him to don a human skin mask and eviscerate people with a chainsaw whenever his uncle starts screaming his name. We don't really learn anything new here that we couldn't already have pieced together from the previous film and what we do learn detracts more than it adds to the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE mythos.

Truth be told, we never really get a true Leatherface origin because everything in this prequel hinges on Uncle Hoyt's insanity and aside from a few brief throwaway lines of Hoyt explaining his past flirtation with cannibalism, we never get enough to truly explain why Hoyt is the psychopathic bastard he is. The movie isn't really about Leatherface - he's second fiddle to madman Hoyt. It's almost as if this prequel needs its own prequel showing us how Hoyt reached the point of insanity he had by the time the events of this film come to pass. On second thought, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNING just doesn't interest me. It probably wouldn't have a chainsaw in it either so that idea is already out the window.

This prequel really is R. Lee Ermey's movie and as much as I love me some bad ass crazy R. Lee Ermey, something just doesn't click this time around. His Hoyt comes across as more of a parody of his FULL METAL JACKET drill sergeant role than as the crazy scary mofo he's supposed to be. Seeing him play Hoyt as the right wing redneck lovechild of Hannibal Lector and Maniac Cop left me feeling a better title for the film would have been THE R. LEE ERMEY SHOUTS INSULTS AT YOU UNTIL A DEFORMED MONGOLOID GUTS YOU WITH A CHAINSAW MASSACRE. Probably too long for the marquee, but you get the idea.

Nothing in the movie could ever match the terror that is Michael Bay's giant hand.

The remake left me feeling "meh." This prequel/sequel left me rather "blah." "Blah" is definitely a step down from "Meh." I never felt scared and I was totally indifferent to the violence and gore as well. Every time the soundtrack goes silent you better believe a loud crashing jump scare is imminent; none of them work. God, how I've so come to hate that crap. This is a friggin' TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE flick; it should be horrifying on a purely visceral level and not resorting to the same cheap scare tactic that every slasher movie for the last 25 years has fallen back on. I never even squirmed in my seat or felt repulsed or disgusted. I came to the realization while watching this movie that I'm not desensitized to movie violence; it's that excessive gore done solely for the sake of shock value with no real emotional impact behind it has absolutely zero effect on me, so much so that I'd personally call this movie tame. The intensity level is minimal and you have no real reason to care. The victims aren't interesting enough to root for and aside from Ermey, the rest of the Hewitt clan, including Leatherface himself, are just sorta there. The way it all plays out has a serious "been there, done that" feel to it, and the very nature of the prequel means you know none of the Hewitt's are going to be killed and none of these victims are going to get out alive. If you've made a TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE movie that doesn't scare or revile you in any way then the movie is an automatic failure in my book. The only real suspense I felt stemmed from watching and wondering if Jordana Brewster's low rider jeans would finally reveal some ass crack.

The intelligence insulting scene revealing how old man Monty lost his legs was the nail in the coffin for me. A totally squandered subplot has the outlaw biker boyfriend of a lady biker Ermey killed show up at the Hewitt's household. Before he's quickly chainsawed, he does manage to show old Monty in the thigh. Monty will begin complaining of feeling feverish from the wound mere minutes after being shot. In order to prevent it from getting infected Hoyt orders Leatherface to saw off his leg. Then he tells Leatherface to cut off the other one. When asked why, Hoyt replies, "Balance." The whole scene is just a set-up for an R. Lee Ermey punchline. How they kept Monty from bleeding to death after having his legs amputated with a chainsaw - a significantly worse wound than being shot in the leg - is ignored.

And I don't care how scared I may be, I am going to notice the seven-foot tall, three hundred plus pound man with the chainsaw larger than the average midget cowering down in the backseat of the car I've just jumped into and taken off in. Sorry, that's just not the sort of thing that's hard to miss.

If you're going for an ending that stupid why not just make it a total parody and have John Larroquette's movie-ending voiceover cut off in mid-sentence by the sound of chainsaw cutting through the voice booth door and one final scream on Larroquette's part as he's murdered.

As the movie ends with Leatherface, chainsaw in hand, walking slowly into the darkness accompanied by that voiceover detailing the history of the Hewitt family reign of terror, I could not but help to think that perhaps that where this character needs to go - into the dark void of filmdom before any further carnage is brought upon its legacy.

Nonetheless, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING did pretty good box office and that means we can look forward to more empty remakes, prequels, sequels, etc., including, most likely, yet another installment in this franchise. We've already had the end and now the beginning so I guess next will be TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE MIDDLE to be followed by TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING OF THE END. Or they can make TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEW BEGINNING in which a one-armed Leatherface has taken up residence in another remote stretch of Texas with his blind 600-pound wife and a litter of facially-deformed cannibal rugrats. Perhaps it best if I don't give Michael Bay ideas.

PASSIONS meets DRAGONBALL Z meets THE OC

"How about I make you my wi-otch?"

Let me repeat that line one more time.

"How about I make you my wi-otch?"

While a certain line uttered by Samuel L. Jackson in a certain movie dealing with deadly serpents on an airliner will go down as the most quotable line of the 2006 summer movie season, the verbal bitchslap above delivered quite proudly by the villain in THE COVENANT deserves a special place in the hallowed halls of bad movie dialog. Not since the characters in YOU GOT SERVED taunted one another with that film's title as the ultimate putdown has such a monumentally stupid taunt been hurled by a movie character. And keep in mind this is only the most memorably bad line in a film with quite a few howlingly bad lines, such as the movie's villain taunts one of the film's heroes with his rendition of "Little Miss Muffet" and an overexcited witch using his powers and excitedly exclaiming that "Harry Potter can kiss my ass!"

THE COVENANT desperately wants to be THE LOST BOYS for the MySpace generation. It wants to be it so bad it can taste it. It wants it's so bad it even mimics a famous scene from THE LOST BOYS within its opening minutes. But THE COVENANT is not THE LOST BOYS. It's not THE CRAFT either. It is a film of such dubious nature that it may very well have already secured itself a place in the bad movie lexicon. Mostly, THE COVENANT feels like the crummy feature length pilot for a penis-centric variation of Charmed commissioned by the CW Network that somehow ended up in the hands of a confused studio exec who greenlit it as a theatrically released motion picture. It isn't even a complete movie, and it's obvious that the people that made it meant for it to be me nothing more than the opening salvo in a new franchise. Newsflash for everyone involved: This franchise already exists - it's called THE BROTHERHOOD.

Comparisons have already been made by many online as to how much THE COVENANT resembles David DeCoteau's low budget direct-to-video BROTHERHOOD franchise. It does indeed, right down to even finding a way to slip in a healthy dose of homoeroticism. If I were Mr. DeCoteau I'd at least have a talk with my lawyer about it. At least he can take solace in the fact that THE COVENANT proves that even a bigger budget wouldn't have made any of his BROTHERHOOD films better.

THE COVENANT opens with an explanation regarding the film's backstory that does an astonishingly piss poor job explaining that backstory. While that backstory is constantly referenced and the nature of their witchy powers is constantly spoken about, never at any point do we ever get anything substantial that explains who they are, how they came to be, what they can or cannot do, or why I should give a damn.

Here's what I do know. Remember the Salem witch trials? Well, they weren't just out of control religious zealots after all. Turns out there were five families that were indeed into the whole witchcraft thing. One of those families was believed to have been killed off during the Salem witch trials. The other four families moved down the coast to escape persecution where they founded the town of Ipswich.

According to this film, all witches are male. Sorry, ladies, but it looks like so many of you got burned at the stake, hanged, and dunked to death for nothing.

The first born male of each generation of these families gains magical powers at the age of 13; eventually reaching full power on their 18th birthday, an event known as the Ascension. You'll know when they're using their powers because their eyes will flash or the blackened contact lens will make an appearance. It all depends on how much juice they're using, whether it be to magically fix a transmission or engaging in live action Magic: The Gathering.

Ipswich is also home to a posh private school for wealthy offspring. It is here that the newest generation of hunky he-witches reigns supreme as the coolest kids in school - a foursome known to others by their clique name "The Sons of Ipswich". How cool are they? The girls all want them and the guys want to be their friends. They all dress like their heading out to a 30 Seconds to Mars concert. They can get away with breaking the law and nearly getting cops killed showing off their powers to make their car fly off a cliff. The Sons of Ipswich initially come across as a bunch of obnoxious pretty boys very high on themselves thanks to their satanic powers to the point that the film seemed to be setting them up to be the villains. But no, they are supposed to be the good guys.

Caleb, Pogue, Tyler, & Reid… America's favorite goth boy band: COVENANT

The conscience of the quartet is the eldest and most powerful of this new generation of man-witch, Caleb. You see their magic powers can be highly addictive, and revealing their power in public is a very bad thing too. Caleb is constantly lecturing his brethren about this, even getting into a back alley magic scuffle with one of his own over such things. Overuse of the power also causes tremendous wear and tear on the human body. This can cause severe premature aging. Caleb's dad abused his magic after ascending and now he's a 44 year old man that looks like he's over 100 years old who lives in a secluded house out in the woods. When Caleb is not lecturing the other three about matters of using and abusing magic, Caleb's barfly-looking mom is constantly lecturing him about not ending up like his father. There's so much preaching about the risks of becoming addicted to magic use that if such magic were real to you and I, THE COVENANT would almost qualify as an ABC Afterschool Special.

The whole movie is really all about Caleb and his new girlfriend Sarah, the new girl in school who doesn't come from a wealthy family, a fact talked up repeatedly early on that ultimately amounts to not much of anything. The other members of his Covenant are just along for the ride. You want to know about the other four? One's a hothead that uses his powers more than he should, another rides a motorcycle and dates Sarah's roommate, and the other, well, he's just sort of there. Even the film's big climactic showdown will only spotlight Caleb. Of the other three, one will be in the hospital and the other two will be relegated to Sarah protection duty at the school dance, a task they will fail in a matter of moments and then never be heard from again for the remainder of the film. The movie should have been called CALEB: THE ASCENSION since only his character and his upcoming ascension seems relevant to the plot.

Caleb is played by a model (Surprise! Surprise!) turned actor who looks to have been spawned in a gene splicing experiment that set out to produce an offspring from the DNA of Billy Zane and David Boreanaz. I think a little Josh Hartnett got tossed in for good measure too. I'm not 100% positive but I do believe that all four of the actors playing members of the Covenant started their acting careers modeling underwear in a catalog. Do I dare make an Abercrombie & Witch joke? Too late! They should really be underwear models for a Home Depot sales flyer because their performances are as wooden as they come.

People in this movie do not act. They brood, so much so the movie should have been called THE BROOD. That's pretty much the only emotion anyone here seems to be capable of.

ASCENSION: a cologne for men

The Covenant boys just happen to be on the school swim team, a convenient way to get them into speedos to show off their perfect abs. When the film then followed them into the men's shower for some gratuitous male nudity, that's when I began to wonder if David DeCoteau had directed the film after all. You'd certainly never guess this movie was directed by Renny Harlin, other than the fact that he often makes mediocre movies. This is the guy whose current cinematic contributions to the 21st century have thus far been DRIVEN, EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING, MINDHUNTERS, and now this. Yikes!

So anyway, Caleb meets a new kid in town, magic is used, lectures are given, classes are attended, books are read, showers are taken, women are dated, women are stalked, women are endangered, women are hospitalized, nightmares are had, shirtless men wake up sweaty, phantasms called darklings scare Caleb, little spiders run wild, a murder occurs, friends fight amongst themselves, the Vice President from THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW calls students into his office, foosball is played, and we learn that Joan Jett & the Blackhearts' "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" can turn any night at the local bar into Coyote Ugly.

The longer the movie went on the more I came to realize that the plot didn't seem to be going anywhere. That's probably because there is no actual plot until the last half hour, and even then what little happens story-wise is just an excuse to set up the f/x filled finale. Much of what passes for a plot involves Caleb & Sarah's relationship and random acts of dark magic that leads to members of the Covenant talking about how they could sense a strong magic in the air (Are they sure that wasn't just the lightning from the thunderstorms that seem to be breaking out in Ipswich every 10 minutes?) and accuse one another of playing fast and loose with their magic behind the others' backs. Nothing ever amounts to much of anything. Plot elements are introduced and then forgotten about. Characters are introduced and then downplayed. It all feels like a TV pilot introducing concepts and characters to be developed over the course of a television series, but again, this is supposed to be a self contained feature film and not a TV pilot.

Sample Ipswich boys' conversation:

"I sensed someone was using their power last night. Was it you?"
"It wasn't me."
"You swear that it wasn't you."
"I swear."
"I don't believe you."
(INSERT SCUFFLE HERE)
"I believe you now."
"Told you."
"If it wasn't you using their power last night then who was it?"
"I don't know."
"I don't know either, but I too sensed the power being used last night."
"Was it you?"
"It wasn't me either."
"We must find out who was using their power last night. But first, I have a hot date."

This isn't entirely accurate but pretty to close it. After about the third conversation of this type I was ready to cop to being the unauthorized magic abuser in hopes of getting on with the movie.

The plot finally kicks in once Caleb realizes that all is not right with his new buddy Chase. Caleb saw the magical flash in Chase's eyes when he used some dark mojo to defeat him in a little mano-a-mano freestyle swimming. So much for the Witchfinder General's theory that witches hate being dunked in water. More importantly, I do believe this is the first film in the history of motion pictures to feature have an evil demonic being use their hellacious powers to cheat at swimming. That's gotta count for something.

Dude, I already told you I didn't use my powers last night and I'm sorry I forgot the marshmallows.

The Covenant four finally venture down into their gothic looking, candle lit crypt to consult the magical floating book in the circle of fire that holds the history of their bloodline and come to learn that Chase is actually the evil last descendant of the previously believed to be extinct bloodline of the fifth family.

I don't know what I found more pathetic: that it took the movie nearly an hour to finally begin focusing on an actual storyline or that the revelation regarding the true villain of the movie is something that should be fairly obvious from the very early going once the movie established that it had no intention of turning any of the four of them into the bad guy.

This is yet another one of those movies where the villain's identity, whose obviousness isn't just because they show you this character reeking havoc in the trailer and TV spots for the film (and which really do give away all the best scenes), isn't revealed until the third act at which time the villain opts to continue messing around with others rather than getting right down to what he really wants. Chase makes that one witch's girlfriend dangerously ill and then proceeds to assault that witch himself. Chase actually tells him that he used her to get to him and now he's going to abuse him to get to Caleb, the same guy that Chase has already been shown with in 90% of his prior scenes. And after saying and doing this, Chase then turns right around and goes after Sarah, at which time he then straight up confronts Caleb and reveals his insidious plan to steal Caleb's powers at the time of his ascension. Why not skip the middlemen and get right to the damn point?

The important thing is that the actor playing Chase takes the revelation that he's now playing the film's villain as his cue to overact to mind-blowing degree. He literally goes from being a low key guy to a cackling, sneering, taunting, magic wielding megalomaniac of the Cobra Commander variety. Excessive scenery chewing must be another unfortunate side effect of abusing witchery.

Were you aware that a witch's main powers are flying, shattering and unshattering glass, magically throwing others around like Magneto using his powers over metal to toss Wolverine about, and (Here's the big one!) hurling balls of exploding plasma - or was it concentrated magic? Screw riding on broomsticks, casting spells, or making potions - being a witch in the world of THE COVENANT means you can kick ass like a character from a goth-themed Street Fighter video game. The magical energy ball-arrific final battle between Caleb and Chase set inside of a flaming barn on yet another dark stormy night is a howler. In fact, I think I've just come up with an even better title for the movie...

Here's another little fact I bet you didn't know about witchcraft. Witches, once they've ascended, can give their powers away by "willing" them to another, but doing so will kill the person willing their powers away. Prior to ascending a witch has kick ass powers. Once they ascend they become super witches. And if someone then wills their powers to someone that has already ascended, say, for example, the nearly dead as it is 44-going-on-100 father of a just ascended witch, then that ascended witch will become a MEGA WITCH~! capable of the Powers of Grayskull and super-sized Dragonball Z exploding energy orbs.

Witches must also have super healing abilities because these two guys kept slamming into and crashing through stuff that would easily shatter bones and devastate bodily organs only to get back up and keep on going.

When the dust settled I loved how Caleb found himself with all of this newfound power yet he didn't bother to use any of it when he made his way through the burning barn in order to save the trapped Sarah. The magic is apparently great at starting fires but sucks at putting them out.

What I didn't love was how the movie itself didn't even have a real ending. It just ends. Was Chase vaporized or did he escape to return for a future installment? We don't know. The battle ends, Chase's body is never found, Caleb & Sarah drive off into the sunset, and the movie ends. To hell with giving us an actual ending! To hell with the other members of the Covenant! To hell with any explanation as to what this newfound power means to Caleb's future! To hell with having a clue what actually became of Chase! To hell with the audience!

I swear there are moments where THE COVENANT is so god awful it actually becomes a hoot to watch. Alas, those moments are fleeting, few and far between. It's mainly a really lame movie with a script that's the very definition of hackneyed. The truth is that this movie was not written or directed or produced - it was manufactured. Every aspect of the movie feels like it's been gone over with a fine tooth comb by the marketing department to make absolute certain it would appeal to the tweener demographic, particularly the casting of the lead pretty boys and the relentless soundtrack, but in doing so they completely forget to bother making a movie that amounted to anything more than an incomplete first chapter in what I strongly suspect will go on to spawn a series of barely related direct-to-DVD sequels in much the same fashion as THE SKULLS and CRUEL INTENTIONS have.

Then again, if the word of mouth I overheard leaving the theater was any indication, maybe not. I overheard a teenager on the way out offer his review, "It was one of those movies that I could tell people, 'Yeah, I saw it.'" That pretty much sums up my thoughts on it as well.

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND... YEAH, I SAW THE COVENANT