Sullied. That’s how I felt as I left the screening of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. I felt unclean. Not because of the film’s desperate attempts at shocking gore and violence – and it’s not as grotesque as it likes to think it is – but because it feels the need to further diminish the legacy of Tobe Hooper’s classic original.

Maybe I’m not the best person to ask – I hold the 1974 original in astronomically high regard, considering it to be a true masterpiece of horror – but I would consider The Beginning to be one of the most worthless horror films in recent memory. Marcus Nispel’s remake – to which this is a prequel, one of the only things it’s actually good at – is one of the few films I’ve ever disliked enough to feel like walking out of (I didn’t, just in case you’re curious). And yet it had a certain style; a look and feel to it that at least made it worth something as a piece of cinema.

The Beginning lacks atmosphere, tension, pace, charismatic performances, and – if I’m honest – gore. But I’ll address the good things first.

As a prequel, The Beginning does its job well. Both the events surrounding Hoyt’s “promotion”, and the manner in which one recurring character loses his legs, can’t fail to raise a knowing smile. For what it’s worth, the continuity between the two films is strong.

The second, and only other good thing about The Beginning, is R. Lee Ermey. It’s clear that the film-makers were so pleased with his performance in the remake, that they wanted to give him more to do here. Ermey spends the film being either deeply unpleasant, highly amusing, or both. They might as well have called the film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The R. Lee Ermey Show, because that’s essentially what it is. If you’re a fan, it’ll be worth a rental to enjoy his performance.

Having covered all the positives, let’s focus on the bad. Sadly, it’s the same sorry list again. We have a collection of pretty protagonists that we don’t care about. There’s the younger brother, wallowing in his older brother’s shadow. Big Bro is a Vietnam veteran, who’s returning to kill a few more Gooks with Little Bro under his wing. Accompanying these two thin cliches are their girlfriends: the dark haired feisty one, and the busty, blond slightly rebellious one, who doesn’t want Little Bro – her boyfriend – to go off to war.

They all look pretty, and they all start the film doing naughty things, like having sex and smoking pot. It comes as no surprise when they’re captured by the evil mutant hillbillies Sheriff Hoyt, and subjected to all manner of unpleasantness. If anything, it comes as a relief; at last, we can stop wondering when they’ll fall foul of the family, and get down to some serious gore.

It’s a crushing disappointment when it doesn’t really happen. The most brutal scene in the entire film takes place in the first five minutes. A character we’re given no time to develop a relationship with meets a fate far more violent than anybody else in the film. From there on in, The Beginning shows us nothing that hasn’t been seen before. Leatherface has been humanized, and given an origin. And yet at the same time has become some sort of stomping man-hulk, more in the vein of Kane Hodder’s Jason Voorhees than Gunnar Hansen’s original, slightly bumbling Leatherface. Andrew Bryniarski has an intensity and purpose that just doesn’t work for me. He’s too powerful, too much of the time.

The beauty of the original Leatherface is that he’s treated like an idiot. He’s prone to bursts of sudden homicidal violence, but he’s not some great skulking brute that’ll tear your legs off when ordered. That’s what Leatherface seems to be here. Despite an attempt to tell his back story – and there’s not a nuclear weapons test, or mutant hillbilly parent in sight – the Leatherface of The Beginning seems far less human than ever before.

But at least there’s some gore, right? Some glorious money shots to please the gore hounds? Sadly, no. The Beginning thinks it’s violent, and unpleasant. There’s face slicing, skin removal, throat slitting, chainsaw impaling, leg breaking, and a little rape. And yet The Beginning actually shows surprisingly little of any of it. Every nasty act that Leatherface perpetrates with his chainsaw takes place partially off screen. The face removal scene is no nastier than similar scenes in several other films.

I can’t help but think of the buzz saw kill in the final stages of Alex Aja’s magnificent Haute Tension when I think about The Beginning. It’s such a brutal, gore drenched and harrowing kill that I’d have expected more people to imitate. Given Leatherface’s weapon of choice, I’d expect to see much horrific splatter here, but it falls short. If people are going to keep telling us that their film is the most astonishing slice of ordeal horror yet seen, they need to start living up to it. It’s starting to get old.

The Beginning even tries to emulate Tobe Hooper’s original dinner table scene, building up to a potential ending that could be really, really unpleasant. I was looking forward to a metaphorical kick in the nuts; a genuine “they didn’t just do that, did they?” moment. Kill ‘em all in shockingly ghastly ways and fade to black. Instead, I got a very cheap looking effect with a poor prosthetic, and twenty more minutes of tedium. Yawn.

Fundamentally, what The Beginning lacks the most is any tangible sense of fear. If someone could just figure out how to combine the splatterific intentions of films like this with the raw, primeval sense of fear induced by such films as Ring, and The Grudge, then they’d be onto something special. Haute Tension is the only recent film in this genre that’s come close.

There’s no psychology to The Beginning. It doesn’t worm its way into your soul and haunt your waking moments. And it should – Leatherface should be one of the most chilling icons in the horror genre. Instead, misguided sequels, tired remakes, and this utterly worthless prequel have diluted one of my favourite demons.

So, in an attempt to purge the memory of both this and the remake from my soul, excuse me while I watch the original again. And if you have the urge to go and see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning this Halloween, I suggest you do the same. In the dark. With the doors firmly locked.