The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Movie Review:


This seriously unnecessary remake refashions the pivotal 1974 horror classic as yet another teen slasher movie, complete with today's standard grimy production design, shrieking musical score and an almost depressing lack of originality.

It's 1973 and five young people are driving back from a day trip to Mexico in their Scooby van: Erin and Kemper (Biel and Balfour) are the group's leaders, a couple in trouble when the strong-willed Erin discovers that the whole trip was basically an excuse to buy lots of hash.

Andy and Pepper (Vogel and Leerhsen) can't keep their hands off each other, while Morgan (Tucker) is the nerdy voice of reason. Then they pick up a hitchhiker who changes their course and leaves them in the hands of a freaky family of local goombahs who are hiding their whacked out brother Leatherface (Bryniarski), who has a thing for chainsaws and making face masks out of, erm, real faces. Will the sheriff (Ermy) be any help at all?

Director Nispel has some very nifty tricks up his sleeve--the film looks beautiful in a music video sort of way, with shafts of light coming from nowhere to bisect each scene, water dripping in every set (and if it doesn't, there are handy fire sprinklers or a sudden rainstorm to keep things sticky), and art direction that's clearly obsessed with filth.

Sadly, all of these things undermine the story because they're so artificial and silly, not to mention overused in the genre (David Fincher has a lot to answer for!). The cast is very good, bravely diving into stereotypical characters who continually do moronic things while a superhuman (all-powerful despite physical affliction, all-knowing despite mental disability) villain chases them.

And the film's framing scenes are very nicely done, as are a few seriously intense sequences, such as the sheriff's encounter with three terrified young people. But mostly this is just another lame monster-in-the-backwoods movie that makes us flinch because of the sheer gruesomeness of what's on screen.

We certainly never feel any real tension or fear in a story this predictable.

Ho hum.

Rich Cline

August 18th 1973 is a date that the Travis County, Texas police would rather forget and the FBI has swept under the carpet. On that day a van full of five teenagers, returning from Mexico and heading to Dallas for a concert met a grisly fate. A lone survivor reported their ordeal at the hands of a chainsaw wielding masked man and his macabre family. Police investigated the house in question to discover the basement filled with the dismembered parts from thirty-three different bodies, including Miss Hardesty’s four missing friends. Details of the case shocked the nation, as the tale of terror became known as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Hollywood is running out of ideas, it’s official. Why concentrate on finding new, talented upcoming writers with original concepts when they can just trawl the back catalogue and remake or “reimagine” a classic?

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the major influence in the teen slasher horror genre and can be credited as starting it all. The low budget, surreal look at the evil of man is considered a horror masterpiece and still stands up today against many a modern movie. A remake was totally unnecessary.

Again this movie makes out that it is based on true events. In fact it was an original screenplay by Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel, who concocted the story after researching two serial killers called Ed Gein and Elmer Wayne. The first film never actually said it was real but this new version does.

Director Marcus Nispel and producer Michael Bay have taken the situation and the key character from the original, Leatherface and produced a completely different movie. Gone are the surreal elements of the story, the fast-paced killing spree from when Leatherface first appears and the elaborate and gruesome appearance of the house. Instead we have a new set of teenage characters (Yes no Franklin or Sally), a new family for Leatherface and quite ordinary looking, but slightly dirty house with a horrific basement.
While the budget is still small by Hollywood standards ($9.5 million), the film has too much of a polished look to distinguish it from any other modern horror flick. Where the original’s low budget credentials made the moviemakers more creative in their depictions of killing, modern special effects techniques are abound in this remake, pushing the gore content up ten fold. This takes a lot away from the movie and just sends it into the usual teen slasher bracket.

The performances from the cast are fine. Jessica Biel is a stunning looking scream queen that does her best with the constant running and hysterics. The rest of the young cast, as with the original are just meat for the killer but do their best with their limited screen time. R. Lee Ermey is suitably creepy as the local sheriff and Andrew Brynairski gives his own interpretation of Leatherface but just doesn’t capture the character as well as the original’s Gunnar Hansen. He seems to be missing the frustrated, child-like qualities that the character had in the first film and replaced them with anger over a disfiguring disease that is destroying his face, thus the need for the skin masks.

If this movie had been made first, it certainly wouldn’t have had the same effect as the original had in 1974. Even though the filmmakers have tried to reinvent the story by adding new characters, more gore and a flasher look, what they have failed to do is keep the same intensity, shock value and macabre that the first one had in abundance. There is nothing here to make the movie standout. The scares are nothing new, the killings are uninventive and too graphic to have any shock value and the new Leatherface family are far less chilling, surreal and menacing.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a movie that didn’t need to be made. Watch the original instead.

Star Rating = * *

Jamie Kelwick

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