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TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE
by Peter Sobczynski

October 17, 2003

(out of 4 stars)

FILM CREDITS: Written by Scott Kosar. Directed by Marcus Nispel. Starring Jessica Biel, Jonathan Tucker, Erica Leerhsen, Matt Vogel, Eric Balfour and R. Lee Ermey. Rated R

At first, the idea of someone remaking Tobe Hooper’s 1974 horror classic "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" struck me as a bit of cinematic blasphemy on the level of having Greedo fire first-especially in the hands of producer Michael Bay (whose crimes against cinema have been well-chronicled here) and first-time director Marcus Nispel (who is best known for a few music videos and for having been canned from "End of Days"). I said as much last Halloween at Northwestern University, when I did a pre-screening lecture on the original to an audience that, to my genuine horror, had never seen it before (and who had no idea what they were in for). However, in the subsequent year, two notions began to crop up that made me think that perhaps the film might actually be a worthwhile venture after all. First of all, several of my own personal favorite horror films have actually been remakes of earlier hits-John Carpenter’s "The Thing", David Cronenberg’s "The Fly", Paul Schrader’s "Cat People" and the riffs on "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" created by Philip Kaufman and Abel Ferrara. More importantly, the trailer for the remake was a little masterpiece of the form-a truly unsettling couple of minutes that suggested that, against all odds, Nispel and Bay might have actually come up with something worthy of its legendary name-and I found myself eagerly anticipating the final film.

It took "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" about 15 minutes before all my anticipation was completely stripped away and replaced with utter boredom. Instead of figuring out a way of reinventing the film for a new generation, it merely spends most of its time simply restaging many of the key moments from the earlier film (though not all of them-the infamous dinner scene has been completely deleted). Instead of expertly mixing gut-crunching horror, jet-black humor and a genuine sense of dread (one of the keys to the effectiveness of the original was the sense that there were genuine maniacs at the controls and that anything could happen to anyone at any time), this version simply tries to gross people out with plenty of gratuitous gore and violence. (Another one of the keys to the original was the fact that, for all of its supposed carnage, there is almost no on-screen blood or violence on display-Hooper suggested it so expertly with his editing and sound effects that the mind created more mayhem than there actually was in the final product.)

Like the original, this one starts off on August 18, 1973, as a group of dopey kids (Jessica Biel, Jonathan Tucker, Eric Balfour, Erica Leerhsen and Mike Vogel) are driving in a van through the back roads of Texas-instead of going to investigate the desecration of some graves, they are driving back from Mexico (with a pinata full of pot) and heading for a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert (cue "Sweet Home Alabama") when they come across a strange hitch-hiker in the middle of the road. This messy encounter eventually forces them to pull off the road and approach a creepy house in the middle of nowhere, inside of which lurks the mysterious hulk Leatherface (Andrew Brynarski) who begins to pick them off one by one with sledgehammers, meat hooks and a trusty chainsaw.

I mentioned those earlier examples of great horror remakes. Those films had two things in common: they each radically reworked the original material to such a degree that you didn’t spend the entire time comparing the redone scenes to the previous versions. In addition, all of those films were made by bold, visionary directors who managed to find ways to fuse their unique viewpoints onto classic material. That is not the case with "TCM" (frankly, it doesn’t deserve the luster of the full title) as Nispel and writer Scott Kosar are content to simply retread the earlier material and the few attempts at altering the story simply don’t really jibe. And since part of the appeal of the original film was that the shocks never came on any predictable timetable that would allow viewers to get comfortable, the relentless predictability quickly works against the aura of dread that it is trying to create.

This predictability in evident even in something as rudimentary as the casting. The original was cast entirely with unknown actors and their rough, unpolished work, coupled with their unfamiliar faces, lent a documentary-like feel to the film; since we didn’t know who the star was supposed to be, any one of them could have died at any time. This time around, the roles of the kids have been filled by four relative unknowns (unless you caught Leerhsen in "Blair Witch 2"), and Jessica Biel, star of "7th Heaven", skin-cleanser ads and the covers of magazines where starlets take off most, but not all, of their clothes-gee, any guesses as to who is going to survive until the final reel? Another casting mistake is the presence of R. Lee Ermey as a creepy sheriff-since we know him so well as the hard-ass monster from "Full Metal Jacket", it comes as less than a surprise when it turns out that there is more to his character than meets the eye. (Even so, he turns in the most energetic performance of the film and it is a shame that they all but ignore him in the second half.)

The most idiotic "improvement" in "TCM" has to do with the character of the infamous Leatherface. The reason he became an instant horror icon (besides his tendency to wear the skinned-off faces of his victims) was because he had no backstory to speak of; he was simply the bogeyman incarnate and would kill you in horrible ways for no other reason than the simple fact that you were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Here, the insane decision has been made to attempt to "humanize" the character to make his actions less inexplicable. Instead of being a faceless monster, we learn that his real name is Thomas Brown Hewitt and that he was driven to kill because as a child, he developed an ugly skin disease that caused the other kids to make fun of him. While I may have idly speculated on the origins of Leatherface at one point or another, I never would have guessed that he and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer shared a vaguely similar backstory.

-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2003 Peter Sobczynski
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While the views expressed by Peter Sobczynski do not necessarily reflect the views of Criticdoctor.com, the Critic Doctor will occasionally examine Mr. Sobczynski's film reviews to bring forth an honest examination of those views expressed.