Cast:
Jessica Biel (Erin), Jonathan Tucker (Morgan), Erica Leerhsen (Pepper), Mike Vogel (Andy), Eric Balfour (Kemper), Andrew Bryniarski (Thomas Hewitt / Leatherface), R. Lee Ermey (Sheriff Hoyt), David Dorfman (Jedidiah), Lauren German (Teenage Girl), Terrence Evans (Old Monty), Marietta Marich (Luda Mae), Heather Kafka (Henrietta), and Kathy Lamkin (Tea Lady in Trailer) Directed by Marcus Nispel (#2108 - Friday the 13th [2009])
Review:
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) is an undisputed horror classic, let us get that out of the way. Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel crafted a worthy production that came first from Hooper coming up with a story based on "isolation, the woods, the darkness, and the unknown", one that found elements of news coverage of graphic violence and the exploits of serial murderer Ed Gein to make for a feature film (Henkel also cited killer Elmer Wayne Henley). Of course, one can't stop at one horror film, because everything needed the idea of a sequel to follow up such vaunted interest. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) was a demented riff that saw Hooper return to direct, while the next two films in Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990) and The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1995) reached smaller and smaller audiences. But then comes a new millennium and perhaps a new era in trying to mine audiences for money based on name value, for which one sees the name Platinum Dunes step in (as created by Michael Bay and others with the express purpose of making cheap features). Hooper and Henkel served as producers on this film, and both share the same cinematographer and opening narrator (I'm sure this time around John Larroquette was not paid in marijuana). This was the directorial debut of Marcus Nispel, who had been born in Frankfurt in West Germany. He had worked in advertising before moving abroad to study at Brooklyn College and the New York Institute of Technology before eventually being a director for commercials at the turn of the 21st century. The film was written by Scott Kosar in his feature writing debut (incidentally, he has written a handful of remake scripts but also The Machinist). A prequel, retaining a few cast members from this film, was released with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006). Incidentally, the next film to bear the Chainsaw label in Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013), tried to serve as a follow-up to only the original that saw it have its own prequel a few years later (to throw you for a loop, thanks to 2022, there are now three Texas Chainsaw Massacre films that all have Larroquette as narrator). The film was released on October 17, 2003 (one thing I will give the film credit for, a horror film being shown in the fall season).
It is amusing, in a sense, to touch upon a film that must have seemed vile and horrific if one had never really seen that many horror movies before that one. The fact that the film runs at 98 minutes is the least surprising thing in the history of all things. I don't exactly remember the acting of most of the folks in the 1974 film, but somehow that film had a raw energy to it that was unsettling and unnerving in what you saw and heard. This film, on the other hand, is everything you could see coming in a "Young Adult Horror Trap" movie, one that is somehow grisly in its levels of gore without being at all interesting in any sort of way with doing anything fresh. It is strange to watch another film set in 1973 that has the same narrator as a film made in 1974 that happens to be shot in a cleaner view by the same man as before only to see a movie that is pale in every facet. Biel (perhaps best known previously for starring on 7th Heaven) is decent, even if one knows from nearly the first minute that she is on screen that she is the Final Girl, but at least when Marilyn Burns was in the previous rendition, one got a real sense of fear and terror from her reactions to what was going on. Here you just see the motions. It is Ermey that nearly lifts the film from the doldrums of remake hell when it comes to the ham that arises from an obvious role that he chews with great interest. He slithers with good ol' boy nature that gives one a rise more than any other time in the film, and that includes the parts with Leatherface, who I somehow have forgotten about unlike the times spent in the first two features.
Obviously, one can't just do a shot-by-shot remake of the first but consider that the framing device of the original was a group of young folks were driving back in a van after checking to see if a grave was desecrated - now we see young folks driving to a concert after buying weed. In short, it is like trying to put ice cubes in soda to make it taste better...flat soda. You've got a good deal of the hallmarks present in other horror films with nameless youths, whether that involves the situation where it seems like the dolts should just leave but do not do so, the aforementioned supporting presence more interesting than the main people, the incredibly obvious Final Girl, a set place that seems to loom larger on the inside, a villain of fairly indestructible tenor (lose an arm and get back to me), and blah blah blah it is conventional stuff. The only people who could get into this are either folks who really appreciate having a watered-down version of something already seen before or ones who seem to believe that they really aren't watching a "safe" film of terror. They probably watch it with casual interest with friends. But for folks like me, who aim to watch (and talk about) as many films as possible on their own, this is nothing more than a boring disgrace that surprises in no regard. Perhaps one has better memories of the film when it was fresh two decades ago, but all I see here is mush ready to be pushed away.
Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.
Next up: The Undead.
