Harefooted Halloween: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

What I Liked: R. Lee Ermey (On Deadly Ground, The Frighteners) does a great job as the sadistic sheriff.  He doesn’t play it subtle at all, which would’ve served the movie better in my opinion, but he puts on a nice show for ya with the callous, crude and straight up assholic attitude.

Jessica Biel (Next) tries hard.  She’s screaming her head off and crying all over the place but always keeps herself moving forward.  Good work.

The set design is well done with tons of random crap strewn about the murder mansion.  All the body parts everywhere, things in jars and general gross wetness of the place is great atmosphere.

What I Didn’t Like: The cinematography is not very well done which is interesting because it’s the same guy that shot the original ’74 joint, Daniel Pearl.  He started out making features but found his real niche in music videos during the mid 80’s.  What got him back into doing films again was this Chainsaw remake.  Both versions use almost exclusively low angle or eye level shots but it bothered me more when Pearl employed the same method again here.  I’m just not sure why.  I felt like I wanted to lift my head up all the time.  And I’m not into the washed out nearly black and white color palate that was used.

This item may seem trivial but it kinda pissed me off that the filmmakers cheated rather badly with one particular kill.  When Leatherface is chasing one of the teens through white sheets that are hung up to dry outside he magically teleports to get in front of the victim and saws one of his legs off.  I don’t know if it was the editor’s fault (Glen Scantlebury (Dracula (1992))) or if they simply fucked up when they shot the scene and they couldn’t really fix it in post.  I know this teleportation shit happens all the fucking time in horror movies (especially slashers) but this specific instance really annoyed me.  I dunno.

Overall Impressions:  First, there is no reason for this film to exist.  The original is a masterpiece and will most likely never be topped.  I’m all for sequels and rip offs but to roll this sonuvabitch out as a remake is pure marketing for a quick cash grab.

But if we leave that aside and judge the picture on its own it still stinks.  It’s slasher movie 101 to a tremendous fault.  Everything you expect to happen in a guy-with-a-chainsaw-running-through-the-woods film happens.  There’s zero unpredictability and that makes for a dull experience.  Like if R. Lee Ermey scaled back his performance to the point where you were unsure if he was a good guy or a bad guy then we’re starting to be a little more thoughtful.  But you know where all characters stand the moment you meet them, and all events play out like you’ve seen a million times before in the most by-the-numbers way possible.

The movie almost feels like it was made by someone that had never seen the original before but was told everything that happens.  It’s not visionary in any way.  There’s nothing about it that’s superior to the first Chainsaw and there aren’t any new idea that are kinda neat which makes this a bit of a wasted effort.

I wanna be clear that this isn’t even close to the worst movie I’ve ever seen.  It’s totally watchable but it’s just so uninteresting.