“I’ve never seen anybody die before.”
Of all the classic horror films that didn’t need a remake, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre tops the list. Tobe Hooper’s brutal, visceral film is a masterpiece of experiential cinema, one that wraps its hand around your heart and squeezes until you can hardly stand it anymore. You don’t want to watch, yet you can’t look away. But that means little and less to Michael Bay, Hollywood’s capitalist frat-boy id, whose company Platinum Dunes still churns out soulless remakes and forgettable crap.
The reason the original Texas Chainsaw was so sickly effective is that we actually liked the kids at its center, which made their gruesome deaths genuinely upsetting. By contrast, there isn’t a single likable character in this version. Director Marcus Nispel seems to have a particular antipathy for his characters, a cynical attitude he also brought to his wretched remake of Friday the 13th. So once again we are only waiting for these people to die, and instead of the grim inevitability of a slasher film, it has all the tedium of a checklist.
After a decent black-and-white opening, replete with narration from a returning John Larroquette, we meet the unlikable quintet at the movie’s core: Erin (Jessica Biel), Kemper (Eric Balfour, one of the sleaziest-looking actors alive), Morgan (Jonathan Tucker), Andy (Mike Vogel), and Pepper (Erica Leehrsen), a hitchhiker that they picked up. Of these five, only Tucker makes any real impression, because Tucker is a compelling actor who livens up any material he’s given. Biel has never been good in anything, and is simply awful here; furthermore, she looks completely unnatural in a cowboy hat (which thankfully she ditches early on). Erin and Kemper are supposed to be a couple, but Biel and Balfour have zero chemistry, and all Erin wants to do is criticize Kemper and bully him into proposing to her. Later we find out that Erin can hotwire a car, and spent some time in juvie, which makes no sense in the context of the character we’re presented with. Erin is a collection of traits that never coalesce into an actual character.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre at least looks good, though. Nispel is a music video veteran with an eye for lighting and framing, and it doesn’t hurt that the original film’s cinematographer, Daniel Pearl, is back to shoot this version. Everything looks hot, and the actors all look sweaty and sticky, almost like they have a film on them – with the exception of Biel, who always looks like she’s ready to walk a runway. If nothing else, Nispel’s film will make you squirm, even if it relies on over-the-top grotesqueries like a pig’s head covered in flies.
And I will give the film credit for changing up the plot somewhat. Kemper picks up a hitchhiker (the fact that he does this twice makes one wonder why Pepper is written as a hitcher as well), a young woman who rambles things like “They’re all dead.” When she cries that the van is headed “back there,” she pulls out a pistol and shoots herself. It’s one of the more grisly parts of the movie, and is capped off with a nicely inventive camera angle, through the new hole in her head. And to be honest, it could be the beginning of a different, better film. The group has to travel around with this woman’s body in their van for a long time, trying to find the sheriff so they can hand it over, and the thought of that is sickening. (It brings to mind a similar, horrifying sequence in Hereditary.) If this film weren’t called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and was instead about the crushing psychological toll of traveling around with a stranger’s corpse, it could make for a slick, grim indie film.
The one bright spot in this film is R. Lee Ermey as the villainous Sheriff Hoyt. Ermey attacks the role with his usual flair, making Hoyt into the film’s most (well, only) memorable character: he’s menacing, but also funny in a folksy kind of way. In what I can only imagine was a choice on Ermey’s part, Hoyt takes an instant dislike to Andy, barking lines at him like “Would you mind getting the fuck out of my way, son?” He also gets to anchor Texas Chainsaw‘s best scene, in which Hoyt drags Morgan back into the van and makes him reenact the hitcher’s suicide. It helps that Ermey plays this opposite Tucker, the best actor in the cast by a mile. Tucker plays this perfectly, showing the full weight of what he’s being ordered to do. Morgan has no agency here, no power; he puts the gun in his mouth because he has no choice, and even though we can surmise that it’s unloaded, the message is clear: Morgan’s life is entirely in Hoyt’s hands. And his control.
This version of Leatherface (played by Andrew Byniarski) doesn’t make as much of an impression as the original’s, but it’s not necessarily Byniarski’s fault. The script just doesn’t know what to do with him. Leatherface is just inconsistent; at one point he can sneak up on Kemper undetected, even though he’s six-foot-five, and in other parts he can hardly keep his weapon away from his own flesh. Texas Chainsaw makes two huge missteps with the character. The first is showing us his face, which instantly robs him of the foul unknowability that defines the character. The second is having him change masks; it’s an okay idea in theory, but for some reason he chooses to wear Kemper’s face. Again, in theory it would be terrifying for Erin to run from a killer wearing her boyfriend’s face, but in reality, Eric Balfour does not have a scary face, so Leatherface ends up looking like someone who sells weed to middle schoolers.
Erin’s final escape is a decent set piece (even if it does have her make the questionable decision of hiding in a walk-in freezer), but it suffers from pacing problems. Things grind to a halt when she takes refuge in a trailer, which introduces not only a wildly unnecessary subplot involving a baby, but also Kathy Lamkin, giving one of the most embarrassingly bad performances I’ve ever seen as “Tea Lady,” an overly friendly grandmother type. It’s basically a community theater version of what Margo Martindale perfected on Justified.
Marcus Nispel’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was never going to live up to Tobe Hooper’s, because Hooper’s film is a stone-cold classic that still has the power to shock and discomfit. And there’s not much to recommend here, save for a few nice shots, and the performances of Jonathan Tucker and R. Lee Ermey. Nispel’s film is too forgettable to raise anyone’s ire, and that might be its greatest crime. How do you take a story like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and make it forgettable?
10/1: Hellraiser
10/2: Splice
10/3: Jennifer’s Body
10/4: Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist
10/5: Kill List
10/6: Halloween II
10/7: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge
10/8: Ginger Snaps
10/9: Cube
10/10: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)
10/11: Hell House LLC
10/12: Re-Animator
10/13: Beetlejuice
10/14: Idle Hands
10/15: The Ring
10/16: I Know What You Did Last Summer
10/17: Night of the Living Dead
10/18: The Devil’s Backbone
10/19: Event Horizon
10/20: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
10/21: Eyes Without a Face
10/22: The Strangers
10/23: In the Mouth of Madness
10/24: The Amityville Horror
10/25: Gerald’s Game
10/26: The Monster Squad
10/27: Veronica
10/28: High Tension
10/29: The Innkeepers
10/30: The People Under the Stairs
10/31: Saw
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