The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006) is a horror prequel you can watch online on iFILM. Director Jonathan Liebesman goes back before the original film to show exactly how Leatherface and the Hewitt family became what they are — and there is nothing reassuring in the answer.

Two brothers and their girlfriends are driving through rural Texas on a last road trip before Vietnam. A collision on an empty highway puts them in the path of Sheriff Hoyt (R. Lee Ermey), who hauls them off to the family homestead rather than the nearest hospital. Jordana Brewster and Matt Bomer play the outsiders; the house they're brought to has its own logic, and that logic has no room for survival.

Produced by the same team behind the 2003 remake, this entry leans harder into dread than into shock — the early-seventies Texas setting feels deliberately suffocating. Ermey's performance as the sheriff is the film's most unnerving element, more controlled and therefore more frightening than anything with a chainsaw. Stream The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning online on iFILM.