Thank you Wyked Angel for this opportunity!

Classic massacre or massacre of a classic?

-erisl, reviewer

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2003 (DVD)
Rated R, Horror
Seen:05/02/2003
Starring: Jessica Biel, Johnathon Tucker, Eric Balfour, Mike Vogel, Erica Leerhsen and Andrew Brynarski
Directed by:Marcus Nispel, Coproduced by Tobe Hooper and Kim Kenkel
Based on the screenplay by Tobe Hooper and Kim Kenkel
New Line Cinemas
Special Features: Trailers, TV ad spots, previews for other movies by New Line, and a video of the song "Suffocate" by Motograter, and PC/Online features.

Five teenagers returning from a trip to Mexico in the early 1970s stop to help a nearly senseless young woman on a lonely road in Texas. This version of the classic horror film presents itself as a pseudo-documentary, complete with black and white police evidence footage, of the aftermath of a day that leaves all but one of the original five dead.

The film is a slow starter, attempting to build up the relationships between the five people through a series of not terribly interesting interactions. Much like the weather during the day,the plot is langorous, hot and dirty. The viewer finds themselves almost stuck to their seat, unable to get up, even if they wanted to.

In this first part of the movie, there is not much to compliment, except some fantastic swift camera movements through a very bloody hole in someone's head and again through the hole in the back window of the group's van. Repititious, but used as a foreshadowing of violent death very well.

As the group meet the inhabitants of this particular dot in the landscape the day gets stranger and more alarming, yet the group seems to only become more confused.
This is, of course, exactly how they are so easily separated and sheparded to the kill as anyone who has watched almost any
horror movie with "Jason" or "Halloween" in the title.

Again using the weather to presage the action, it nears dark and the weather gets stormier and more violent. From here on in, the action is fast, choppy, schocking and dark. Literally. At certain points filmed inside the house, it is difficult to see exactly what is going on.

I was never so caught up in the moment that I could not have turned it off and felt that I would miss something. Visually, the movie had some very nicely done scenes. Two in particular stand out. The first is a sequence wherein one of the males is being chased by Leatherface with his chainsaw, through a set of laundry lines covered in white sheets. Knowing the young man cannot avoid the death, the symbology of the sheets as shrouds was very nice.


The second is a very strong, painful scene in which Leatherface is hanging the same young man from a meathook, applying rock salt to his wound and wrapping it in butcher paper tied with previously leftover human hair. The deftness, and business-like quality of the actions give Leatherface a genuine terror-inspiring quality that only his appearance did not quite fulfill.


A brief view of Leatherface, creating a new face, at a pedal-powered sewing machine, is gratifying and almost the only time
you see him as anything other than a killing machine.


The movie trips up in a few more places, as it includes some horror movie cliches we all wish we wouldn't see anymore. Example: A woman running full tilt through a forest at night, while looking behind her at the onrushing villan. How many times have we all screamed "Stop looking and just run, you are gonna fall down!" as the character does just that? My overall impression is that this is a movie that did not try to create a better-than-the-original, it only redid the same thing but with modern day FX to satify the more jaded theatre audience of today.




Rating: *** Rentable, not ownable, unless you find a good deal or need a complete collection. Fun, but not satisfying for long, similar to a sushi meal.