Review: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Remakes are a tricky business. Especially when the film being reimagined is an established classic. Horror films in general do not lend themselves positively to remakes, largely because the successful ones, the ones that become popular enough to warrant (from a studio's perspective) a remake, are primarily products of their respective time periods. The zeitgeist decides what catches on. Time certainly reflects back upon a film's ultimate historical significance, but it's not the ultimate decider.

Psycho was one of the first truly adventuresome pictures of the 1960s. It tapped into issues of sexual repression, male role issues, promiscuity that had seldom been raised before (or, at least, not in so blatant a fashion). Its remake years later (a virtual shot-by-shot copy by Gus Van Sant) did nothing new to make the film's themes current or fresh. Indeed, the remake felt antiquated next to the urgency of Hitchcock's original masterpiece. George Romero couldn't even succeed at remaking his own film when he remade Night of the Living Dead.

Here we have a similar problem with Marcus Nispel's update of Tobe Hooper's understated masterpiece, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Made in the heyday of American independent production of the 1970s, TCM tapped into sociological issues that may seem quaint by today's standards, but its horrific atrocities (it's amazing how this film disturbs through mood alone - there's very little on-screen violence) gave it a sense of immediacy that has rarely, if ever, been captured so efficiently.

Nispel's remake is a beautifully shot (by the original TCM's DP Daniel Pearl), painfully drab entry into the modern horror genre. Gone are the innocent ramblings by the proto-hippies of the original...here we have 1970s youths who seem every bit products of the 1990s. Not for one second does the film seem to be taking place in anything resembling the '70s (besides the casual availability of marijuana). Rather, Nispel's film is stocked full of attractive, Gap-Ad young actors, each of whom has little to contribute out side of the shock of seeing their beautiful faces with a little blood and grime on them.

Perhaps Nispel's biggest mistake is in his handling of the family. The original film certainly made a star of the character of Leatherface, but upon re-watching it, it becomes obvious that he is not the central character of the family. Indeed, Leatherface has little more screen time than any other member of his family. In the new TCM, Leatherface is everywhere. He's shown sewing up his notorious masks (in the film's most ludicrous achievement, Leatherface' s desire to where other people's faces is blamed on a degenerative skin disease...WTF?) and generally is showcased running around everywhere. The only other family member given any significant screen time is R. Lee Ermey's sheriff character. As great as Ermey can be, he is given too much screen time. With less of him, he might have come off more as deranged and scary, rather than loud and obnoxious.

The most interesting character in the film, Leatherface's sister, is relegated to a few scenes with her mother and the baby she kidnapped from the family's last set of victims. A better way to reimagine this film may have been to completely abandon Leatherface and focus instead on this strange, beautifully rendered lost soul.

But of course, without Leatherface, there's no chainsaw. Which is what Nispel's film is all about. The big thrills over the legitimate chills. I think the director is talented. He shows a smart knowledge of shot composition and formal acuity. He may move on to become something more than a hired gun, but for now, his filmography consists of a single, overindulgent mistake of a film. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, new millennium style, is a big, bloated, empty shell of a film, full of style but lacking any depth whatsoever.

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