The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

"You're all going to die..."
Just when you thought the original was disturbing, gross, disgusting, and frightening, now comes the updated version, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which knows no limits when it comes to gore and intensely terrifying moments. Is it a remake? Not necessarily. However, it is more like a movie that pays tribute to a great classic by offering its own vision of a well-known nightmare of limbs and guts.

While characters and some of the story has changed, the deranged and murderous plot remains the same. An unspeakable turn of events (I will not give away how it all starts, as it is very different from the original) lands a group of teens in a nightmarish maze that throws a mutilated man who wields a giant chainsaw in their path. Not to mention the "crazy" family that turns out to be just as vicious and murderous. For these teens, a safe place is nowhere in their short and painful future.

As I said in the beginning, this is not a remake. Nor is this a...

She said they were all going to die and she wasn't lying
Well, this 2003 remake of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" creeped me out. Of course I waited until late at night to watch it, which is what you were supposed to do with a horror movie, because lately even when a horror film has a good start, such as "Jeepers Creepers," they almost always end up being laughable. Now, I will not go so far as to say this is a great horror film, and I am not suggesting that it replace the raw power of Tobe Hooper's original in any one's mind, but it sure creeped me out more than anything I have seen in a while (except for last month when I watched "The Exorcist" again).

What does this remake have working in its favor? Well, first the film is selective in what it takes from the original. We have the same beginning with the grainy film and the same narration talking about "one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history" (again narrated by a now considerably more famous John Larroquette), and we have the same basic idea that a...

As Remakes Go, This One Aint Half Bad
I had to wonder, initially, why anyone would go through the trouble of remaking a "classic" that already had numerous sequels to begin with. I came into it with "low expectations," in other words. But I must say that after watching it a couple times, I'm not disappointed with the effort.

The only reason for knocking it down to 4 stars is the clumsy framing device. It strives for the same sort of verisimilitude that the original had. Grainy archive footage of some State Investigators going down into the basement of the house of notoriety, filming the grisly scene. It's obviously not original stock footage, but just some attempted levity on the part of the filmmakers. It doesn't work. Yes, we all know that the original film was based on a true story, at least loosely. The actual dude who was the mass killer lived in Wisconsin, not Texas, but that's beside the point.

What this remake does deliver on is "fear factor" moments. The actors portraying the crazies really...

Click to Editorial Reviews