The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)October 17th, 2003
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Music video director Marcus Nispel's completely unnecessary remake of Tobe Hooper's 1974 horror benchmark is still set in the Viet Nam era, but this new version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has been stripped of the political subtext of the early '70s that made the original so memorable. The juxtaposition of horror and comedy has been completely eliminated, too, which means all that's left is the routine horror clichés. Granted, they may not have been clichés 30 years ago, but they sure are now.
The Massacre remake is just a bad idea, and further proof that producer Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor) is, in fact, the father of all things unholy (his right-hand man in this venture is the equally diabolical Mike Fleiss, creator of reality television embarrassments like Are You Hot?). It doesn't work for the very same reason remakes of Halloween or Night of the Living Dead wouldn't work in the 21st century: We're scared of different things now. The Nispel-Bay-Fleiss Cerberus think they're rectifying the situation by making things more bloody and more graphic, while completely forgetting the cool thing about the original was that it just seemed really gory. The original wanted to scare you. This one just wants to separate you from your money.
As far as the story goes, Massacre is like that Telephone game, where one person whispers something to somebody else, who in turn whispers it to another person, et cetera. By the time it gets to the end of the line, the original message has been grossly distorted. But here's the comparison-free synopsis: Five kids in a van stop in rural Texas and meet up with an inbred family which includes a chainsaw-wielding madman we call Leatherface. He chops up four of them but one manages to escape. The escapee is played by Jessica Biel (The Rules of Attraction), and her white tank-top and low-rise jeans seem to get snugger and clingier the more running she does. Yes, she gets wet, and she goes into a meat locker, too.
Massacre is bookended, via John Larroquette narration (he did the first flick, too - 10 years before he turned up on Night Court), with old police films of the crime scene, which lend an irritating Dragnet-meets-The Blair Witch Project feel to the picture. Also bothersome is the film's lighting, especially the scenes in Leatherface's basement lair during which light from unknown sources pours through foundation walls (the original was set mostly during the day and had no lighting issues). I hate to admit this, but I did dig the Bay-tastic shot that goes back through a bullet hole in one character's head, even though it probably cost more than the entire original film did.
1:29 - R for strong horror violence/gore, language and drug content
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