The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Directed
by Marcus Nipsel
Starring: Jessica Biel, Jonathan Tucker, Erica Leerhsen,
Mike Vogel, R. Lee Ermey, Andrew Bryniarski
Written by Scott Kosar, based on the original screenplay
by Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper
Review
by Neil Wright
The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a moronic, grotesque barf-bag
of degrading scenes masquerading as a horror film. The film
has no discernible qualities or justification for existing
other than to disgust and sicken. It is not scary, it is not
artful or skilled, and it does not bother to generate suspense
or sympathy for any of the characters involved. It exists
solely within its own shallow universe for 100 of the most
depressing minutes I have ever spent in a movie theater. I
spent $6.25 (at a matinee no less) and all I got was a movie
about people being torn apart and impaled on meat hooks by
a degenerate freak. I should have been scared, I guess. Instead
I was angry for more than a day after the viewing.
To be
fair, I have seen and admire the original 1974 film The
Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Director Tobe Hooper's movie,
while unpleasant and relentless, is a remarkable exercise
in horror that has lost little of its impact. The story about
of group of young adults who meet gruesome fates at the hands
of cannibalistic inbred killers is masterful in its execution,
and its evocation of dread. Yes, it is extremely violent.
What else would you expect from a movie with that title? However,
the presentation of the violence is similar to that of Psycho's
in that it leaves more to the viewer's imagination by not
truly showing the chainsaw tear into a human being. The violence
arrives unexpectedly and suddenly, with little time to dwell
on the gory details. It is more important to believe that
we have seen people hewn limb from limb than to actually witness
it.
The first
Texas Chain Saw Massacre does indeed have terrorized
people impaled on meat hooks, and that dreaded power tool,
but it also has a weirdly straightforward direction that almost
makes it seem like a documentary. It had no time for artifice
and irony when it was too busy scaring the hell out of us.
That alone may be the reason a copy of the film is preserved
in the Smithsonian.
The Texas
Chainsaw remake, if it can be called that, lacks the gritty
artistry of the original, and substitutes it with prolonged
cruelty. It is merely a series of violent events that are
desperately in search of a purpose. It doesn't have a character,
good or evil, with whom we can identify. Since I could not
empathize with any of the characters whether they be potential
victim or monster, Chainsaw fails on the horror film's
most fundamental level. However briefly the original cast
was onscreen, I at least empathized with them and believed
in their existence and fear. At no point in this new Chainsaw
did I believe I was watching real people in a terrifying situation.
Emotional investment is critical to this type of film. Since
I felt nothing but disgust, I will describe the autopsy-report
that is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
In 1973
a group of five twenty-somethings are driving through Texas
to a Lynrd Skynrd concert. Nothing in their demeanor, speech,
or clothing supports this timeline conceit, but never mind.
They are stopped in their journey courtesy of a nearly catatonic
young woman, and a sudden chord of loud music which will only
make someone who has not seen three horror films in the past
thirty years jump. The woman weeps and screams incoherently,
pulls a handgun out from the butchered area between her legs,
places the gun in her mouth and shoots herself. The camera
then zooms through the hole in the back of her head and out
the rear window. Having fun yet?
What follows
is one of the movie's most callous non-events. What are the
five fun-loving kids going to do with that inconvenient dead
girl in the back seat? While they debate what to do, the camera
lovingly lingers on the gore-splattered window. Eventually,
all of the despicable boys and the marginally nicer girls
are told to go to an abandoned factory thanks to the nice
old woman at a local store that serves rotten, fly-infested
pig heads. Of course these Mensa candidates trust her and
drive to said destination. While they await the local sheriff,
another sparkling debate is brought to the floor: whether
to leave the poor dead girl behind in the completely unsuspicious
abandoned factory. During this exchange of the minds, the
camera dwells on brain matter on the back seat, one of the
girls vomiting in the dirt, and that lovely gore encrusted
hole in the rear window. Director Marcus Nipsel just could
not resist filming that all too critical window. While two
of the kids wait for the sheriff, three others go off in search
of another phone. They arrive at a dilapidated mansion in
the middle of nowhere, inhabited only by a legless old man.
Eventually the massacre, as promised in the title, begins.
One of the boys is brained by the ghoul, Leatherface, hiding
in a back room. The kid is then strung up in the murky basement
and eventually his face is removed. Another boy has his leg
severed, is put on a meat hook, has salt ground into his bleeding
stump, and spends the rest of his time on screen almost pulling
himself off of the hook only to fall on it again and again.
A scene played for laughs has one of the girls pawed at by
the old amputee while he pretends to need help emptying his
catheter and colostomy bag. Simply delightful. Other atrocities
include witnessing the first dead girl's molestation by R.
Lee Ermey, while her body is cocooned in plastic wrap, and
the last of the boys is tortured by having a pistol forced
into his mouth and a bottle smashed across his teeth. Finally
we must endure some bizarre and completely shameless Christ
imagery as the last intact survivor finds poor meat hook guy.
Normally,
I would not be so descriptive, but I want to illuminate how
much fun I had watching mutilations and demeaning behavior
rather than experiencing a truly scary film. Violation and
barbarism are the goals of this Chainsaw rather than
timing and understanding the true nature of horror.
The rest
of the movie relies on the time-honored Idiot Plot Scenario
in which the survivors could get away from the monster if
only they didn't act like complete idiots. This means that
Jessica Biel, the archetypal Final Girl, must run into
closets and other enclosed spaces like a trailer home, or
say... a locker to make sure that Leatherface always catches
up to her. No matter, the Idiot plot is also aided by those
other reliable clichés that have never gone out of style,
such as the False Scare Animal (used twice), the Car
that Will Not Start (used three times), and the Undying
Killer.
We should
fear, and on some level be interested in Leatherface, but
there are no moments to even properly see the mad dog killer.
The movie is filmed in such impenetrable gloom that it is
hard to see anything. It also generates zero suspense with
its editing. The constant use of rapid fire TV-commercial-style
cuts is anathema to horror films.
The villains
in this movie made me long for the terrifying presence of
the killer in Halloween, who seemed more of a force
of nature than human, or Hannibal Lecter and the strange humanity
lurking behind his eyes in The Silence of the Lambs.
Why would I want to replace one mad killer with another? Perhaps
it is that the others elicit responses as real people or true
icons of fear. Who did not believe in poor Norman Bates' suffering
in Psycho? Who can say that Lecter on some level does
not elicit some form of pity? These are characters that exist
beyond the scope of their films.
So what
are we left with at the film's end? A movie that is diseased
with no sense of pace, logic, or dread, made by filmmakers
who seem to take a certain pleasure in debasement and vicarious
suffering. It is simply hate-filled and sadistic with circus
geeks at its helm. It came as no surprise to me that it was
produced by schlock-meister Michael Bay.
I love
great horror films. They can be cathartic, fun, disturbing
and the best that cinema has to offer. In many ways, horror
films tap into universal anxieties and place them in an orderly
structure that we can experience safely. I even enjoy some
truly gory horror films. No has ever accused Dawn of the
Dead or John Carpenter's The Thing, or even some
of Dario Argento's Grand Guignols of being models of restraint.
I appreciate these films when they challenge my sensibilities,
my empathy, and with whom my allegiance lies. Wes Craven's
The Last House on the Left, which explored material
even darker than this sack of garbage, is such a film. I admired
that movie's directness, its presentation of evil, and the
effect that it has on all involved. It is also one of the
most difficult movies I have ever watched, but it never took
it's victims suffering as a cause for laughs or ironic asides.
Craven and his partner, Sean S. Cunnigham, were willing to
explore those dark regions of human nature without chuckling
at their own creativity.
I believe
that to make a truly frightening horror movie is one of the
most difficult achievements in film; not least because it
is a disparaged genre. Never mind that subject matter can
be redeemed by craft and artistry; it is not the subject matter
that is important, rather how it is executed. Still, the great
horror films are few and far between. Maybe it is because
it is much easier to make a bad film when it can be just as
profitable as a good one.
Watch
any of the other films mentioned in this review and see a
real horror movie. Go out and rent the original Texas Chain
Saw Massacre. I can't promise you will have a good time,
but I can promise you will be scared. Do not waste your time
on trash that seems to be designed for the titillation of
sadists and fans of snuff films.
When Neil doesn't like a movie, he means it. You can email
him here.
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