Film Reviews

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Andrew Bryniarski
• Details: US / 98 mins / (18).

A remake of the near mythological horror of 1974, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre purports to be a true story and follows a group of not-so-wholesome but pretty teens on their way to a concert in 1973. Along the way they encounter a group of cannibalistic backwater country psychos, whose primary means of execution is a chainsaw welding, disfigured man-child called 'Leatherface' (Bryniarski).
Something of a classic, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a spicy low budget but urgent picture which expertly charted a course between gore and general psychological horror with a blackly humorous underbelly. The fact that Michael Bay (director of Armageddon and Bad Bays II) was on production duties may explain just why the remake is a vacuous exercise in dumb, heavily stylised, delivery, with no sense of purpose beyond looking as glossy as possible. The film is as much a collection of barely related horror stereotypes of terror and gore, which jar uncomfortably each other, and the script moves with scant fluency or intelligence. All too quickly Nispel runs out of ideas beyond what order to kill his pretty teen protagonists (the star, Jessica Biel, seems to have been hired on the strength of how good she looks in a tank top.) The fact that interest has plummeted significant before the second one is even offed says it all, really. Rent the original instead. There's so much more to it than tripe.

Review by Garreth Murphy