The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

I tried to go into this "reinterpretation" of TCM with an open mind, and not compare every scene with the 1974 original, of which I'm extremely partial to. I tried to imagine that I had never seen the first Saw' or any of it's crappy sequels. I tried to enjoy this one, I tried to like it and, well, no matter how hard I tried...I just could'nt. Leaving the theatre with my buddy, who proclaimed this to be one of the best horror films of the new millennium, and even, "gasp", better than Tobe Hooper's original film, I realized that maybe I was a tad prejudiced in the sense that my admiration for the first film is so high. There was no way I could go into a film calling itself "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and be judgmental of it from a neutral standpoint. This 2003 version is not a remake in the sense of say, the redo of "Psycho" back in 1998, which was a shot by shot, frame by frame, "let's copy everything from Hitchcock's movie and introduce nothing new" type of film.

Here the story is basically the same, with a vanload of teens stumbling across a family of murderous backwoods weirdos, but that's where any similarity ends. Everything happens differently in terms of the characters, story, etc. In a sense, it's basically TCM part five, as it does what the previous Saw' sequels did, introduce a new family while having Leatherface featured as the main killer ala Freddy or Jason. Then again, a movie with a part 5 after it's title would probably not do so hot at the box office, so you use the notorious name of the original, of which the director himself stated he wanted "for the name value alone"

My main gripe with this one is that they essentially made it a slasher film, with Leatherface in the Jason or Mike Myers role chasing around a bunch of teenagers. In Hooper's film it was the entire family that posed the danger, with each character being just as important as the next. Of course there was only 3 to the family in Hooper's film (well, 5 if you count Grandpa and Grandma) as opposed to a whole frigging neighborhood of em' in this one. The concept of the family was simply not developed as much as it should have been, and aside from Leatherface and the Sheriff, no other member implied a sense of true menace. The film did have it's gruesome moments, including a nasty bit of meat hook mayhem, but nothing seemed to have that impact of, say, the first kill from the original. When old Gunnar Hansen clubs Kirk that first time and slams that steel door shut, the audience knows they are fucked. Don't expect anything of that nature in this film. It was gruesome mind you, but more in the shove it in your face kind of approach, whereas most of the horror in the first one was implied rather than shown, thus leaving the viewer to think they had seen more than they actually had.

I had no gripes for the cast, as Jessica Biel (wow!) plays the heroine and does a damn nice job looking super sexy and being a take charge kind of gal. Everyone else did decent as well, even the various family members. To bad they were not given more to do within the film. As for Leatherface, I thought his mask looked sort of lame and we got way, way too much of him. Again, the character is thrown into the psycho killer role of chasing everyone around with his chainsaw doing his best Jason Voorhees impersonation. We also get a look under the mask, and are told he has a skin disease, but c'mon what self respecting Saw' fan did not already know that? As strictly a Chainsaw sequel, this 2003 version is way better than parts 2-4. As a remake, excuse me, "reinterpretation" of Tobe Hooper's original film, there is no comparison. I think we need a re-release of the original Saw', ala what they did with "The Exorcist" and "Alien" so a whole new generation can see it on the big screen and not some glorified sequel pretending to be "original".