If you remember back in my review of the original film, I mentioned that this was my first real exposure to this franchise. This was another instance where everything came together all at the right time. When this came out in 2003, it was right when, despite my initial reservations about seeing any of these films, I was becoming interested in them and saw that trailer for the original that freaked me out so much. The idea of the original being remade also intrigued me because, at that point, movies that were no more recent than the 60's were the ones that were remade. Putting aside the 80's remakes of 50's science fiction films such as John Carpenter's The Thing, David Cronenberg's The Fly, and Chuck Russell's The Blob, remakes around that time referred to those of Psycho, The Haunting, and House on Haunted Hill: again, all from the 50's and 60's. So, the idea of a movie from the 70's being remade struck me as being very unusual since, being someone who watched almost nothing but films from the 30's to the 60's for the first part of my life, I always viewed the time periods from the 70's onward as being contemporary and, therefore, the movies made then didn't warrant being remade and modernized to me. On top of that, remaking the movie would also mean reinventing an icon of modern horror like Leatherface and while many other famous horror characters such as Dracula, the Frankenstein monster, the Mummy, and even King Kong, had been reinterpreted many times over, it felt more natural in their case since they either stemmed from classic literature, which can be adapted and redone many times, instead of being purely cinematic creations or, in the case of King Kong, their stories just could easily be moved to modern times, like the 1976 version of that character. Recreating a character like Leatherface, whose foundation is very firmly that of the original film and whose story had been expanded into sequels (that's another thing: movies with a bunch of sequels generally didn't get remade, with the exception at that time being Psycho, and it didn't seem necessary either), was another aspect that felt very alien to me. I thought, "That's like trying to recreate Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, or Freddy Krueger. How would you do that?" (If I only knew what was to come.)
To make a long story short, the very concept behind this remake had me intrigued from the get-go, even though I wouldn't actually see it until a year after it came out, although I did see the theatrical trailer for it on a New Line DVD that I got during the following summer. As I said back in my review of the original, even though I was intrigued, I was hesistant about actually seeing these movies due to that trailer for the original and the simple question of whether or not I wanted to watch some movies about a guy with a chainsaw slaughtering people. By that point, I had become a big of the Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nighmare on Elm Street series but The Texas Chainsaw Massacre always just felt much more extreme due to its title, perhaps a little too extreme even for me. It was some time during my senior year in high school in 2004 when I caught the remake on cable one night (it was either during October or after it because I remember seeing a lot of those documentaries about the original around that same time). I was about to change the channel the minute I saw the title on the TV screen but, after thinking about it, I decided to bite the bullet and just watch it. I was glad that I made that decision because I thought the movie was awesome. While it seems like a cliche thing to say now, I had never seen anything so raw, brutal, and intense at that point. I was like, "Okay, this right here is a horror film!" I know some of you who despise this movie are probably rolling your eyes at that statement but that was my honest reaction. After I saw it several times on cable (although I think I saw it all the way through only once), I knew this was a movie I had to have and so I got both it and the original on DVD that Christmas. Another thing you might remember from my review of the original is that this movie, along with other factors, rather hampered my first viewing of the original. While I love the original very much so now, it seemed rather tame and dated to me the first time I watched it, no doubt due to my being much more familiar with this film. I guess the lesson there is don't see a modernized version before you see the original. But, in any case, while my opinion of the original grew and grew over time, the remake was a movie that I liked very much from the get go and my high opinion of it has lasted through the years. Looking at it today, while I have come to agree that the original is the superior and I do admit that it does have some flaws, I still think it's a worthy companion piece to the 1974 classic, a lot better than the majority of the remakes that followed it, and a good horror film in its own right.
In 1973, the discovery of a house of horrors in Texas as well as the most recent atrocities committed by its inhabitants horrified the nation. After thirty years of being filed away in the cold cases section of the Travis County Police Department, the files on the case, which contained over 1,300 pieces of evidence and a walkthrough of the crime scene, are opened and re-examined. The events of August 18, 1973 are then recounted. Five young adults are driving through rural Texas on their way to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert in Dallas after spending a few days in Mexico. On their way, they come across a disoriented, almost catatonic young woman walking on the side of the road who babbles about having to get away from a "bad man." Although they pick her up and attempt to take her to safety, she panics when she sees that they're heading into a rural town and, after telling them that they're all going to die, kills herself with a .357 Magnum. Afterward, they drive to a rundown but operating gas station and ask the elderly woman who runs the place to contact the sheriff for them. While she apparently does so, she says that the sheriff wants them to drive over to a nearby mill to make their report. With no other options, they do so and come across a bizarre-looking little kid who tells them that the sheriff lives nearby. Two of the kids head in the direction given to them by the boy and come across an old plantation-house. While the owner of the house says that the sheriff doesn't live there but offers to call him up for them, the sheriff seems to arrive at the mill and takes the body away. And unbeknownst to Erin, one of the two girls in the group, her boyfriend Kemper was killed by Leatherface in another part of the house while she was on the phone with the "sheriff" and it isn't long before her and her friends begin falling prey to the chainsaw-wielding maniac and his deranged clan.
Because Michael Bay's name was all over the trailers and TV spots for the film, I assumed that he was the director. However, I, of course, soon learned that, while his production company produced it, the movie was actually directed by Marcus Nispel, who had never directed a feature film before but had done many music videos as well as some video documentaries (and, unfortunately, he was the first in an annoying trend that I will touch on later). While I wouldn't call Nispel one of the greatest directors by any means, I do think he has some talent. As I will describe shortly, I like the look that he gave the film and I thought he did well in filming the more intense scenes as well as giving the locations and such a real uncomfortable rawness that works well. However, it's a shame that, ever since making this movie, Nispel has done almost nothing but remakes. At first, I thought he did something totally original called Pathfinder the year after this movie but I've since found out that was an American remake of a Norwegian film. His other credits include a Frankenstein TV movie, the 2009 reboot of Friday the 13th (which I like despite its flaws), and the 2011 Conan the Barbarian. I think I heard at one point that he was supposed to direct a remake of Escape from New York but I guess that fell-through. While I think lately he's been working on films that are his own, I just find it disconcerting that the guy has spent most of his feature-directing career recreating the works of others and he hasn't tried to follow the path taken by Zack Snyder, whose first film was the Dawn of the Dead remake, and use the success of his first film to try make other movies that are his own.
Given my introduction of this review, you may not be surprised to find that I wasn't shocked when I discovered that, despite how successful it was, this film generally isn't very well liked, particularly by die-hard fans of the original. On the one hand, I very much understand the reasoning of the detractors. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is just such a product of its time that nothing else, be it sequels or remakes or what, will ever be able to recapture what that film is in terms of its cultural significance as well as its unique look and feel. It was just a lightning-in-a-bottle situation that will never happen again. So, I can definitely understand why so many people hate the idea that this movie ever was remade. But, on the other hand, you have people who like not just the original film but the franchise as a whole and they tend to not like the remake as well. To them, I have to say that, after the cinematic abortion that was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, a remake was probably the only way to go. That movie damaged the image of the franchise so much, making both it and its characters, especially Leatherface, a complete joke, that the only way to continue it had to have been to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. (If you think you could make a sequel to The Next Generation, I would love to hear it!) And it paid off. Whether you like the movie or not, you can't deny that it revived the franchise and, also, I would go even far as to say that it may have created new interest in the original, not only repairing the damage that The Next Generation did to the franchise as a whole but to the original in particular (after checking out that last movie, I doubt anybody who hadn't seen the original beforehand would have been enthusiastic about seeing the movie that started it all!) So, if you're somebody who felt that the original movie should have been the only one that was ever made, I understand. If you like the franchise as a whole but don't like this film, then that's your right. But you can't deny that this movie did a lot of good for the series. I don't see how you can.
For me, this movie does what a remake should do: take the basic story of the original and do your own thing with it. The concept of five kids falling prey to a deranged family in the Texas backwoods is the same and while there are other aspects of the original that are recreated here, they're done in a completely different way. The hitchhiker scene is in here but it's the polar opposite of its counterpart in the original. While it's obvious who each of the kids in this film is supposed to be in relation to the characters from the original (Erin is Sally, Kemper is Jerry, etc.), they're quite different and have personality traits and dilemmas unique to them. Apart from Leatherface, the family dynamics are totally different here in that there are no real hitchhiker or cook equivalents here. They're their own characters (and I like the idea of their name being Hewitt more than Sawyer because it's not as eye-rollingly cliched to me). There are more locations here than there were in the original and the last twenty minutes is as different as you can get (no dinner scene), with a much more upbeat ending and so forth. And the idea of what we're seeing being an account of something that really happened is much more fleshed out and comes back to conclude the film, unlike the original. All of this adds up to just one of the many things that I like about this movie: it does its own thing and tells its own story instead of xeroxing the original shot for shot.
I've always felt that Erin, played by Jessica Biel, was a worthy successor to Sally from the original. She's strong, beautiful, has a good heart in that she wants to do the right thing with this poor woman who committed suicide in their van by turning her body over to the proper authorities so her family can be notified, and she also does care about her friends. Late in the film when she finds Andy almost dead on the meathook in Leatherface's lair, she puts him out of his misery after he asks her to do so, even though she really doesn't want to and is completely distraught after doing so, and right after that, she finds an injured and shell-shocked Morgan and she gets him on his feet and helps him to escape, even though she could very much leave him since he slows her down due to his condition. I like that she's shown to have a playful, slightly smart-alec attitude at the beginning like when she playfully flips off Morgan when he asks for someone to make her stop singing and when she tosses the joint that her boyfriend, Kemper, gives her out the window and goes, "Oops!" Speaking of which, she has a rather complicated relationship with Kemper. While she does indeed love him and wants to be with him with her mention of a diamond ring, she doesn't like that he's been drinking and smoking weed while they've been in Mexico and is not at all happy when she discovers that he's been smuggling dope in a pinata that they have in their van. Despite that, she is genuinely concerned when he disappears at one point during the film and is out and out horrified when she sees Leatherface wearing his face as a mask later on. She becomes rather frantic like Sally did during the latter half when she's captured by the family and is chased relentlessly by Leatherface, especially when she's picked up by the truck driver and tries to keep from pulling over to the family's gas station, but she doesn't completely lose her mind like Sally did either. And not only does she fight back but she scores two major blows against the family: she chops Leatherface's right arm off, after tricking him no less, and kills Sheriff Hoyt by running him over repeatedly with his own car. Add to that the fact that she rescued a baby girl that the family had kidnapped and that she obviously notified the real authorities who found the Hewitts' home and you realize that the family picked the wrong girl to mess with.
Now, are there a couple of qualms that I have Erin? Eh, a couple. They mainly have to do with Jessica Biel rather than the character herself. First, there's her acting. Now, don't get me wrong. She is good... for the most part. But there are a few lines here and there that I think could have been done better by her, like when she's telling Kemper that the girl who committed suicide in their van has got a family that's going want to know what happened to her, "not just dumped on the side of the road like a piece of trash," or when she later tells Morgan and Pepper, "If you guys just want to take off, that's fine but I am not leaving without him {Kemper}." It's a weird thing to pick on and I know some may not agree with me but I feel they could have used some better takes of those lines. And the other thing about her that gets me is that they make no effort to hide one of the reasons why they cast her: she's hot. They put her in this white tanktop whose bottom half is rolled up so you can see her flat, toned stomach the entire movie (and later on, it gets so wet from the rain that you can see nipples) and these tight-fitting blue jeans and they eventually do show just how well they fit her in a rear shot while she's walking up to the Hewitt house. I know you could argue that it's inspired by that similar shot from the original of Pam walking up to the house but I can't help but feel, especially knowing that Michael Bay was involved with this, that this was the filmmakers saying, "We're not even going to try to hide one of the big reasons why we cast her anymore. Here's her butt." While it doesn't make me dislike the character, I just look at that and say, "It's okay if you hire beautiful women to be in these movies but do you have to make why you hired them so obvious?"
I like Eric Balfour as Erin's boyfriend, Kemper. Some may not like him in that he's maybe just a little bit of a pervy douche when he tells Andy that if he and Pepper get hot while they're making out in the back of the van that they could take their clothes off and he does seem to have an edge to him when he tells Morgan to stop talking about the pinata full of marijuana in front of Erin but, overall, he has such a likable quality to him that I really enjoy his presence. He does genuinely care about Erin as well and admits to her that, yes, he was smuggling dope, but the only reason he did it was so the two of them could have enough money to start a life together. Some may say that he was only saying that so she wouldn't be mad at him anymore and they might also point out that he hid it from her but, for one, he knew that, being who she was, she would object to the weed-smuggling, and for another, he sounded so sincere when he told her that that I, for one, believed him. Now, I do think that they could have expanded on it a little more, like keeping in that deleted scene where he tells her that he wants to marry her but he wants to wait for the right time, that she doesn't want to marry a, "dirty mechanic." I know they cut that bit out in order to get rid of the needless, and ultimately sad, subplot of Erin being pregnant with Kemper's child but they could have left it in and just cut around the mentions of her pregnancy. I think that the moment where she says that she just wants to go home and he says, "That's fine," is a sign of how much he does care about her. I also felt bad for him when he's torn between Morgan and Andy, who just want to dump the girl's body and get out of town, and Erin's need to turn it over to the authorities. While he does at first suggest that he thinks it would be best to just get out, when he learns that the sheriff supposedly lives nearby, he decides to head over to his house and notify him in person.
I think that there's a realistic side to Kemper when he's talking to the elderly woman who runs the gas station in that he tries to remain as polite as he can but starts to get frustrated when the woman says that the sheriff wonders if they wouldn't mind heading over to the old Crawford Mill to make their report. He doesn't become quite as angry about it as Morgan does but, naturally, he doesn't understand why the sheriff won't just come by the gas station instead of making them drive off to an out of the way location to meet him and he tells the woman, "We're not going to drive around this town with a dead girl in the back of our van!" Given the situation, I'm amazed that he didn't lose it worse than what he did. I know I would have. Ultimately, though, Kemper ends up getting killed by Leatherface and his body is dragged down into his lair, where he is butchered and his face is made into a mask. One aspect of Kemper that I think was a bit of missed opportunity is what happens when Leatherface is hoisting up his body like a slab of meat. A diamond ring falls out of his pocket, signifying that he was, indeed, going to ask Erin to marry him. This revelation, though, didn't hit me the first few times I saw the movie, even when I watched it all the way through for the first time. Maybe I wasn't just paying that much attention and since the ring is mentioned very briefly at the beginning of the movie, that could explain why I didn't get its significance (or it could be that I'm just dumb, which is a distinct possibility) but, in any case, I think more could have been done to punctuate its significance. Again, if that deleted conversation between them, minus the pregnancy stuff, that I mentioned earlier was kept in, I think that the thing with the ring would have hit home a little more in. As it is, it's just something that is mentioned briefly at the beginning of the film and by the time we get to the part where the ring falls out, you've probably forgotten about it. All I'm saying is that, while you don't have to beat the audience over the head with an idea, you also have to do more than give them just a little mention of it and expect them to completely get it when its significance is revealed. Other than that, though, I really do like the character of Kemper.
I hate to say it but the guy that identify with the most in this movie is Jonathan Tucker as Morgan. I've been in very bad, tense situations before and while I would like to think that I could be tough when the need arises, in reality I've cracked and start panicking the way Morgan does here. He's actually right in what he says when he tells everyone that they need to get out as soon as possible, despite whatever happens to the girl's body. When Jedidiah tells them that the sheriff is at home getting drunk, I would have said the same thing that Morgan says: "If the sheriff doesn't give a shit, then why should we?" He also has a good point when he says that calling the cops when they've got a pinata full of weed in their van is hardly a good idea. Even though he's not in a wheelchair, he's definitely this film's equivalent to Franklin in that he kind of annoys everybody, though not to the extent that Franklin did, and he does so not by being whiny, although he does become a bit whiny later on (but, again, I understand where he's coming from), but intentionally being somewhat of a pest. I like the moment at the beginning of the movie when he tells Andy, who's been passionately making out with Pepper, about often STDs occur, prompting Andy to flip him off. Although, he does carry things too far when he tells Kemper, "Didn't your mother ever tell you not to pick up hitchhikers?" after the hitchhiker starts letting on what's happened to her and when he acts like something has grabbed his hand when he sticks it into the hood of a car near the Crawford Mill. Really bad timing on that score, pal. He also suggests that he's willing to get out of dodge and leave everyone else behind when he demands the keys from Erin (again, hate to say it but, unless it was someone I was really close to, I could actually see myself doing that if things got really bad; yeah, I'm a freaking coward). But he redeems himself near the end of the movie when he saves Erin from Leatherface, even though he gets killed in the process.
One thing that Jonathan Tucker is very good at in this movie is being panicked and freaked out of his mind. That's one of the reasons why I identified with him so much because he really did seem like he was on the verge of a panic attack in some scenes and I know for a fact that I've acted that way in some situations. After the girl kills herself, his screaming about why they had to pick her up and his telling Kemper why calling the cops is a bad idea feels very much like it's coming from somebody who is losing it big time. The scene with Morgan that made me feel for him the most was when Sheriff Hoyt makes him reenact the suicide for him. His frightened expressions, quivering lip after Hoyt screams, "Get the fuck over there!" when he's reluctant to sit exactly where the girl was, and stammering way of speaking at one point show how he's quickly realized that this sheriff is a psychopath and he's in a lot of danger. When Hoyt makes him put the gun in his mouth like the girl did and he asks what happened next, the way Morgan answers, "She shot herself," with that gun in his mouth is just disturbing for me listen to. At that point, he sounds like he's almost in tears, he's so scared. What's worse is that his torment doesn't end there. After he attempts to shoot Hoyt and realizes that the gun was empty the whole time, Hoyt takes him hostage and not only does he smash him in the face with a liquor bottle when Morgan "bribes" him with his concert tickets, but when they get to the house, Hoyt beats the crap out of him some more, telling him that he's brought it all on himself, before finally taking him into the house. When Erin later finds Morgan in the basement of the house, he's been so badly tortured (he has a large wound on his back, suggesting that he's been hung on a meathook as well) that he's almost catatonic and can barely speak or walk. But, like I said, he eventually does manage to hold off Leatherface so Erin can escape, going out as a hero when Leatherface finally takes his chainsaw to him.
Mike Vogel, who would go on to have a small role in Cloverfield, as Andy is definitely this film's equivalent to Kirk in that he's the most good-loocking of the guys and it's obvious that, like Kirk, he's a jock-type due to his physique, which you see plenty of due his sweaty muscle-shirt, even more so than you did with Kirk with his open button-shirt. He's also like Kirk in that there isn't much to his personality other than he's decent enough guy, although he does say some things at the absolute worst time to say them, like when he's saying, "I guess that's what brains look like," after the girl has killed herself. (In the deleted scenes, they pushed that even farther when Kemper finds out that Erin is pregnant and he says, "So, I guess congratulations are in order. I'll pass out the cigars," prompting Kemper to tell him to shut up.) He also goes along with the possible idea of dumping the girl's body, mainly because, like Morgan, he just wants to get the hell out of this place, although he refuses to leave Kemper behind and goes into the Hewitt house to look for him while Erin distracts old Monty. Even though I identify the most with Morgan, Andy is the one I feel the worst for. Not only does Sheriff Hoyt force him to help wrap up the girl's body and listen to his vulgar, disgusting remarks all the while, but when he gets more messed up in this movie than anybody else, way more than Kirk ever did. Leatherface cuts his leg off, drags him down into the cellar and, unknowingly, causes his fingernails to get pulled off when Andy tries to stop him from doing so (God, looking at that image hurts), puts him on the meathook and proceeds to put a handful of salt on the leg wound (something else that hurts like crap), wraps a paper bag around it, Andy later tries to pull himself off the hook but doesn't make it and falls, forcing the hook in deeper, and when Erin later can't get him off the hook either, she ultimately has to put him out of his misery by stabbing him in the stomach with a knife (and come to think of it, couldn't she have picked a less painful place to stab him?) Watching this movie again and just thinking about it, Andy really suffered during the last few hours of his life. Killing him was undoubtedly the most merciful thing that Erin could have done for him.
Of the five kids, the only one that kind of gets on my nerves is Erica Leerhsen as Pepper. While she's not even close to being as fist-bitingly annoying as Heather from The Next Generation, her constant screaming grates on my nerves after a while. It's not only because she does it a lot but also because her scream is so loud and penetrating. Ms. Leerhsen has a serious set of lungs on her but while that's typically a good thing for someone in a horror film, hers is borderline unbareable. And even when she's not out and out screaming, her panicking is also annoying, like when they find a set of teeth at one point and she yells, "It's someone's fucking teeth!" or later on when Erin is trying to use her knife to start the van but Pepper is so nervous that her hand is shaking while she's holding the flashlight and it makes Erin break the knife-blade in the keyhole. I know she's supposed to be freaked out and I'm aware that I said that I identify with Morgan, who's also freaking out majorly throughout the film, but she just kind of overdoes it. Pepper also comes across as not having much of a brain in her head, even at the start of the film. During the movie's first moments, she's talking about what the odds were of the others driving by just as she was starting to hitchhike and she says that it's like synchronicity, "like this shit just does not happen." Every time I watch this movie, I'm just kind of like, "Okay, you're either stupid or so stoned that you know what you're even saying." I know that's mean but that's just the impression I get from her. I really don't like the idea that she gets killed because she runs out of the van when Leatherface attacks her and Erin while they're inside it. Not only was that, again, rather dumb on her part but it makes her look really selfish since she basically just left Erin behind, even though Leatherface ended up going after her. I know she had sympathy for the hitchhiker but at that point, she was kind of like, "Screw this, you're on your own, Erin!" Doesn't make her that likable to me. In fact, there's a deleted moment between her and Jedidiah that I wish had been left in the movie because I think it would have made her more likable. It's while she, Andy, and Morgan are waiting for Erin and Kemper to come back from the sheriff's house. Jedidiah shows her a picture of her that he's drawn and she sincerely thanks him for doing so and expresses interest in his other works of "art." It was a brief deleted scene but I think it would have added a tiny bit more to her personality and made me like her more if they had left it in. I also kind of wish that they had played a little more with the idea that she's an outsider who became part of this group and is now caught up in this situation with them, like having her say something to that effect but it never goes any farther than what I mentioned above. I just think that could have been an interesting idea. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't out and out hate Pepper at all. I just find her a bit annoying and dumb and I think more could have been done in order to fix that.
Knowing full well that they could not possibly hope to top the hitchhiker scene from the original movie, the filmmakers decided to go a completely different and make the hitchhiker here an escaped victim of the family. Played Lauren German, this poor girl feels like she's been put through the wringer. She's bruised, beaten, and is so traumatized from whatever's happened to her that she can barely speak in a coherent manner. What's really horrific is that there's a lot of blood around the inside of her thighs as well as near her crotch, suggesting that she's been raped (my guess is that Hoyt was probably the one who did it seeing as how sadistic and sick-minded he is). Whatever happened to her is made even more hideous by the fact that we learn later that her family was apparently killed by the family as well and her baby daughter was taken by them. All in all, she's been through such a nightmare that when she realizes that they're driving in the direction of the town where the family lives, she almost causes them to crash by attempting to make them turn around and she ultimately puts a gun in her mouth and shoots herself, though not before warning them that they're all going to die. (I do agree with some criticisms that it doesn't make sense that she seemingly pulls the gun out from between her legs. Where exactly was she keeping it?) It's made all the worse by the idea that the kids have no choice but to keep her body in the van for so long that it begins to smell and Sheriff Hoyt manages to get ahold of it, groping it and such while wrapping it up and ultimately taking off with it. Basically, she escaped the family and freed her soul only for her body to eventually wind back up in their possession and God knows what they proceeded to do it. Life's a bitch, especially in these movies, isn't it? (I feel that if they were going to make a prequel to this, they should have told this girl's story. If you made her and her family very likable characters, then knowing what eventually becomes of her here would have made that movie all the more horrifying than it already would have been.)
I personally enjoy what screenwriter Scott Kosar and Marcus Nispel did with the family in this movie. Besides the simple fact that, apart from Leatherface, they created their own characters instead of trying to make their own versions of the family members from the original, I like some of the other touches they gave them. For instance, I thought it was interesting that they didn't blatantly say that they're cannibals. Granted, we learn in the prequel that they indeed are cannibals, but in this film, it's rather subdued. Other than Andy being put on the meathook, which could be just a means of torture, there's no clear indication that they eat their victims. There's no dinner scene and while there is meat hanging from the ceiling in the kitchen, it's not clear whether they're human or just slabs of beef. There is some blood in a shallow bowl in there as well but that could be blood from some of the pigs and chickens that we see running around the house. The only other thing that hints at cannibalism besides the meathook is what appears to be a pair of bloody long underwear hanging from the ceiling. But, again, it's not human meat and if it's from a human victim, then maybe they just killed that person and one of them intends on wearing it and, in order to do so, they're hanging it up to drain the blood out of it so they can eventually wash and dry it. Or maybe it does belong to one of the family members who got blood all over it from a recent victim and they're doing what I just described. So, I like that, at least before the prequel came out, you weren't sure if the Hewitts were cannibals or if they were just insane and loved killing people, especially city slickers whom they perceived as being snobbish and thinking that they're better than "country folk." It left a lot up to your imagination, which is more fun.
Also, when I first saw Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III after watching this film many times, I was amazed at just how much it borrowed from that movie. I'm not saying that they stole concepts from it but there are a lot of similarities between the concepts of the families in both films. There's a matriarch of the family as well as a disabled person in a wheelchair (the only difference being is that they were one in the same in Leatherface whereas here, it's the characters of Luda May and Monty respectively); Andrew Bryniarski's characterization of Leatherface in this movie is a bit similar to the way R.A. Mihailoff played him in that film; Leatherface has his own private part of the house in both movies; both films have a character who has managed to survive the family's carnage only for them to get killed and for their bodies to, in one way or another, end up back in the family's possession; and they even used a moment that was supposed to have been in Leatherface, the scene where he removes his mask and you see his real face, but was removed from it. (I'm not sure if that scene was actually filmed during the making of that movie or if it never made it past the words on the page. And, interestingly enough, when the hitchhiker killed herself, a brief shot of her ear flying off was cut from the film, identical to a shot involving Tinker that was cut from Leatherface.) Some may call it stealing but I thought it was cool that they, intentionally or not, decided to carry over some concepts from one of the more underrated films in the franchise.
I know some feel that the way Leatherface (or Thomas Hewitt, as he's actually referred to by his family and even in the closing credits) is portrayed in this film, as a typical sadistic mass murderer, is rather bland and unimaginative but I think that it works for this film and is very welcome after the insulting portrayal of him in The Next Generation. Leatherface is a savage beast of a man here. Like I said above, he's kind of like how R.A. Mihailoff portrayed him in the third film, just gone more extreme. While there is still some hint at an underdeveoped, childlike mindset in the scene where he's sitting on the floor in the next room, listening to Luda May talk to Erin and with how he quickly does what she says when she tells him to get Erin out of her sight, those brief moments are the only thing that connects him to the original character. Unlike the cowering, screaming man-child of the original film and the first sequel, this Leatherface fears absolutely nothing and is a pissed off monster who takes a lot of pleasure in terrorizing and killing people, due to the ridicule and teasing that we learn he suffered as a child due to his skin disease. That's another thing that people bash on about this characterization: they gave a concrete reason as to why he wears other people's faces other than it being something that he just does. Now, would I have preferred it to have been left ambiguous like it was originally? Yeah, but since this is a whole new continuity, it didn't bother me (if they had suddenly done that in one of the sequels, though, it would have been a different story). I like how positively relentless Leatherface is in this movie, how he will chase and hunt you down and will not stop until he kills you. The biggest example of that to me is the last twenty or so minutes of the movie, where Leatherface chases Erin and Morgan from the house's basement to this old shack in the woods and after killing Morgan, he continues to pursue Erin. Although he's momentarily held up when he trips over a fence and accidentally cuts his leg with the chainsaw, he follows Erin all the way to the slaughterhouse and continues to chase her inside, stalking her through the meat freezer and into the locker room. Even after she cuts off his arm with a meat cleaver, he follows her all the way back to the gas station and gives the chainsaw one last swing at her. After she drives off, there's a closeup of his face and you can see in his eyes and posture how angry he is that she's escaped from him. Maybe it isn't the most original way they could have portrayed the character but, again, after the way he was in The Next Generation, I'm very happy that they gave Leatherface his balls back for this movie.
As for the mask Leatherface wears in this film, while I do like it more than the mask in the second film and especially the ones he wore in The Next Generation, there's still a bit of an unnatural feeling to it. While it does look like latex to me instead of flayed skin, that's not the problem. The problem is that it looks like they tried too hard to make it look intimidating and scary whereas the mask in the original film just sort of naturally was frightening due to the way it was lit in the various scenes and because its crudeness did make it look like he was wearing an actual face. Here it looks like they tried to make it look more like a monster instead of the sewed together faces of two or more people. However, there are shots of it where I do think it works very well. The one that sticks out the most in my mind is when Andy is looking for Kemper in the house and there's a quick shot of Leatherface watching him through a hole in the wall. The way what little of the mask you can see there combined with the clearest shot of his eyes in the film looks is very creepy. He does look like some sort of hideous creature living in the walls rather than a human being in that instance. They did a good job with that shot. Overall, I don't the main mask in this film is awful but I do wish they had tried to make it look more natural rather than trying so hard to make it look scary. Case in point: the Kemper mask. Now, I thought that was absolutely horrifying because it does look like he's wearing Eric Balfour's face. I actually missed the reveal of that mask the first few times that I saw the movie. I must have just nonchalantly looked away at that moment each time but I remember when I first did see it, I was like, "Oh, shit!" I actually wished he had kept that mask on for the rest of the film rather than going back to the other one, not only because it's so freaky but because it would have been so much more horrific for Erin to be running from and fighting against someone who is wearing the face of her beloved boyfriend for the remainder of the film (like what they did in the prequel) rather than just that brief section.
It's a real shame that the unacceptable behavior of Andrew Bryniarski has tainted many people's opinions of this film. Bryniarski may have played Leatherface really well in this movie, at least in my opinion, but he's made a lot of enemies in real life by acting like an arrogant asshole who treats everyone around him like crap. It suprised me because in the making of documentary on the DVD, he comes across as rather friendly, jokey, and enthusiastic about playing an iconic horror movie villain. Granted, he did seem to terrorize everyone else on the set by maybe getting a little too into the role and his statement in the documentary that he was born to wear the mask was questionable but I didn't think he came across as a jerk. However, a few years after I first saw this movie, my opinion of him began to change due to another interview clip I had seen of him (which I will expound on when I talk about the prequel) and just from horror stories that I had heard about him at conventions. It seemed like every convention he ever went to, he made an absolute jackass out of himself by getting drunk, making fun of people, calling women whores, threatening people, and other disreputable behavior. (R.A. Mihailoff may not appreciate me comparing his characterization of Leatherface to his because I know that the two of them got into a confrontation at one convention and had to be separated before it got violent. I asked Mihailoff about it one time when I met him and he simply said, "No comment.") I heard one story that he showed up late at a Q&A and when he did show up, he was drunk, proceeded to insult a kid in the audience, and proclaimed himself to be the new Jason Voorhees (this was when the Friday the 13th was in pre-production). Another person once said that Bryniarski bullied and insulted him relentlessly on Facebook when he said that he would have rather seen a NECA figure of the Gunnar Hansen Leatherface than his and Bryniarski apparently even threatened legal charges if this guy contacted him again, even though Bryniarski was the once who started the whole thing! His reputation has gotten so bad that you rarely see him at conventions nowadays because no one will invite him. I personally been at one show where he was but I stayed far away from him (I tend to avoid people with bad reputations at conventions anyway but he was someone in particular who I had made a pledge to keep away from). All I remember from him the day I was there was that he loudly blew his nose a couple of times and said that Leatherface had major boogers. (I've heard he does that kind of stuff a lot. Class act.) And just last year, he was arrested on suspicion of animal cruelty by keeping over twenty dogs in a small house so he clearly has issues. I know this has nothing to do with the movie but I just wanted to give my two cents on Bryniarski since I know some may be curious. Bottom line, I like the way he played Leatherface but the guy isn't someone I'd want to be in the same room with if I could help it.
Another character that people have mixed feelings about is R. Lee Ermey as Sheriff Hoyt. Some really like him in the role while others feel that he's playing a more sadistic, murderous version of his character from Full Metal Jacket. The thing with me is that this movie was my introduction to Ermey. I hadn't seen Full Metal Jacket or any of the other movies that he's been in when I first saw this movie so I had nothing else to his compare his performance to. And even now, after seeing a lot of the movies that he's been in, I feel the same way about him in this movie as I did when I first saw it: I think he's great. The minute he pulled up in his sheriff's car and got out, chewing some tobacco with an evil scowl on his face, I knew he was bad news. He's somebody who just makes you uncomfortable, with how he nonchalantly lookes over the crime scene of the van and makes off-color comments like, "Wow, look at that mess," and is very hostile towards everyone else, with comments like, "Excuse me, you mind getting the fuck out of my way, son?" towards Andy and such. Things get even worse when he ropes Andy into helping him wrap the girl's body up with ceram wrap and makes some really disgusting and inappropriate comments like, "You know, back when I was a young patrolman I used to love wrapping up these young honeys. Yeah, cop me a little bit of a feel every now and then, you know. {He says that last part while doing so to the body and all of this morbid crap that he says and does makes my earlier theory that he could have possibly raped the girl much more hideous.} Ooh, look at that. She's kind of wet down there. What you boys been doing with this dead body anyway?" Another part that's both appalling and yet rather funny happens when Andy and Morgan are taking the completely wrapped up body over to Hoyt's car. Pepper comments, "It just seems so wrong," to which Hoyt responds, "Don't give me any crap, young lady. Goddamnit, I've got just as much respect for a dead body as anybody." Right after he says that, he sees that Andy and Morgan are about to put the body in the backseat of his car and yells, "Hey! Get that nasty goddamn thing out of the backseat of my goddamn car! Put it in the trunk. What the hell's the matter with you?" He just blatantly contradicted what he told Pepper and doesn't even care.
He may have just come across as a creep at first but when he pops back up later on in the film, Hoyt proves just how sadistic he really is, forcing Erin, Pepper, and Morgan out of the van on his "suspicion" that they're taking drugs and forcing them onto the ground, ignoring Erin's pleas for help, and making up wild accusations that Kemper murdered the hitchhiker and then ran off. He sadistically shoots right next to Erin's head when she tries to get back up and then, in what I think is the most tense scene in the film, takes Morgan into the van and forces him to reenact the girl's suicide for him. As I described earlier, the crap that he does to Morgan in that van is unreal: scaring him half out of his mind, forcing him to put a pistol in his mouth and put his finger on the trigger, and, when Morgan pulls the gun on him, he tempts him to shoot him by taunting him. When Morgan pulls the trigger only to reveal that it wasn't loaded, Hoyt takes him hostage on the grounds that he intently tried to kill him and continues to torture him, smashing a liquor bottle on his face on the grounds of "bribery" and beats the living snot out of him when they arrive at the house before forcing him inside. He later tortures Erin by forcing her to keep her head right next to his crotch (he doesn't have his pants on at this time) while he's sitting on the couch and pours some liquor onto her face. In other words, he's an absolutely sadistic person, both in terms of causing pain and fear as well as being sexually deviant towards women. All of this is brought home to me at the end of the film when Erin is picked up by the truck driver, who promptly drives her to the family's gas station. The minute she sees Hoty's sheriff's car, she really panics and almost causes the guy to run off the road. That to me is a frightening prospect: to know that the only authority figure in the vicinity is a sadistic monster and that no one else will listen to or believe you (on top of that, I also like how she's acting the same way the hitchhiker did and that we now understand her actions due to what's happened to Erin). All of this makes Erin's revenge on Hoyt as satisfying as it can get. When she hits him with his own car and drives over his body a couple of times, you can't help but get a feeling of pure bliss and satisfaction over him getting his just desserts after all the pain and terror that he's caused.
If there's any correlation between a character in this film and the original, other than Leatherface, it's the matriarch of the family, Luda May (Marietta Marich). You could see her as this film's version of the old man from the original in that she's the public face of the Hewitt family due to her being the most normal looking. She runs the gas station like Jim Siedow's character did in the original and there are two sides to her personality: the side she shows to those who stop by the station and the one that she shows while amongst her family. While she does try to come across as polite as possible in her public persona like the old man did, there's a dismissive and nonchalant tone to her voice that rubs the kids the wrong way. Her smiling, jovial way of telling Kemper that they have to drive over to the Crawford Mill to meet the sheriff and that the sheriff wouldn't say why he just wouldn't come by the station is enough to frustrate anybody. The last straw is when Kemper tells Luda May that they're not going to drive around with a dead girl in their van and she just says, "Young man, what you do is your own business." That would make you think, "Okay, this woman clearly doesn't give a shit so it's no use talking to her." When we see her again late in the film amongst her family, I'm able to draw another tie between this film and Leatherface. Like Mama Sawyer, she gets irritated at the ruckus that Hoyt's causing while he's messing with Erin, telling him, "You already caused enough trouble. Stop bothering her," but when Erin pleads to Luda May for help, she makes it clear that she has no sympathy for her, telling her, "I know your kind. Nothing but cruelty and ridicule for my boy all the time he was growing up. Does anybody around here care about me and my boy?!" Very similar to that scene in Leatherface. I just can't help but like how the movie ties together stuff from the original and the sequels as well.
One family member that's memorable to me simply because of his handicap is Old Monty (Terence Evans). There's not much to his character other than he's a grumpy, crusty old man who doesn't like visitors, is very picky about who he lets in his house, and is clearly a sinister presence but he's unforgettable simply because of the way he looks, with his wheelchair, amuptated legs, the cane that he carries around, and that annoying little dog who won't stop growling and barking at strangers. He does manage to be rather intimidating in the scene where he catches Erin and Andy in his house, telling Andy, "You little turd. You're so dead you don't even know it," and then proceeds to apparently challenge Andy when stomps his cane on the floor and says, "Bring it!" However, you quickly learn that the stomping was a signal to Leatherface and that he was telling him to bring his chainsaw. He also attempts to keep Erin and Andy from escaping and slows Andy down by whacking him with the cane while he's running out of the house, which eventually leads to him getting caught. One scene that I don't quite get is when Erin finds Monty in the bathroom and he asks her to help him get out of the floor. I would assume that she's supposed to get him back in the wheelchair but she's lifting him up right next to the toilet and the wheelchair isn't anywhere nearby. I really don't understand what she's supposed to be doing. I know that the real reason behind it is to distract her so Leatherface can kill Kemper but I still don't get what this action is supposed to accomplish practically. In any case, though, Terence Evans sure was lucky in this scene in that he got to put his hand on Jessica Biel's butt and not get slapped for it. (God, I'm such a pig.)
One family member whose motivations I don't get is young Jedidiah (David Dorfman), the weird little boy that the kids come across at the Crawford Mill. When they first meet him, he acts all distracted and eccentric, looking around constantly and not paying attention to the kids, and shows Erin and Kemper the way to the family's house, basically leading them right into the lion's den. But then, after Erin has been captured, Jedidiah seems to have a change of heart and yells at Luda May and Hoyt not to hurt her. "Kid, if you don't want your family members to kill her, then why did you tell her and Kemper to go over to the house in the first place?" Yes, it is true that Hoyt was on his way to the Crawford Mill so they probably would have fallen victim to the family eventually but I still don't get why Jedidiah did that and then proceeded to show Erin the way out of the basement when she and Morgan are being chased by Leatherface. I don't get whose side this kid is on. Plus, other than that, the kid just looked silly to me. I understand that he's meant to be this raggedy, possibly inbred kid but he looks too over the top and ridiculous with his deformed teeth, messed up hair, and grimy looking clothes. While I don't out and out hate Jedidiah and I do think that the idea of a family member who doesn't like what his family does is an interesting one (the closest we've ever gotten to that before was with the old man's mixed feelings about killing in the original), I feel that they didn't plan the concept out far enough and as a result, Jedidiah's actions in the film are contradictory and confusing.
The family members that I really don't give a crap about are Henrietta (Heather Kafka) and the tea lady (Kathy Lamkin), the two women living in the trailer that Erin comes across while being chased by Leatherface after he's killed Pepper. These characters did not need to be in the movie in my opinion. While it is great that Erin ultimately got the baby that Henrietta had taken from the hitchhiker away from her (and, also, the sight of Henrietta holding that crying baby, knowing what has happened, is quite troubling, particularly with just the way that baby's crying), you could have written that subplot out along with both of these characters and it wouldn't have made a bit of difference. The only other purpose Henrietta serves besides the baby is that she tells Erin about Leatherface's skin disease but by that point, we had already gotten a look at his real face and could tell that he was messed up. We didn't need it to be expounded on. The tea lady (whom technically should be Henrietta since she's the one who actually offers Erin the tea) is even more pointless. There is positively no reason for her to be there because she does nothing. In fact, I think she's kind of annoying due to the remarks she makes, like telling Erin that waking the baby wasn't a good idea and that phones are hassle, all the while nodding like an idiot. And let's not forget her line, "Oh, my, my, my, my, my!" which they put in the movie's trailer for some reason. While she's only in this one scene and Henrietta briefly appears again at the end of the movie, I still maintain that these characters and this whole scene should have been written out of the script. They should have just had Erin run from Leatherface and get ambused by Hoyt, who knocks her unconscious and takes her back to the house. That would have gotten the job done much quicker and kept the momentum going, rather than have it stop dead for this useless scene.
I finally have to mention Big Rig Bob (Brad Leland), the trucker that picks Erin up at the end of the film. The reason for my mentioning such a minor character is that he was originally supposed to be played by Gunnar Hansen. Yeah, they offered that cameo to him but he turned them down because, for one, he didn't like the idea of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre being remade in the first place, and for another, apparently the person involved with the movie who called him said something stupid along the lines of, "Now this time, it's going to be a dark, psychological thriller and not a gore-fest like the original," which made Hansen question whether they'd seen the original movie or not. So, he turned it down, which is too bad because, even though it would have been a small part, it would have been nice to see him in the movie nevertheless.
It's a shame that the very look of this movie, created via the bleach bypass process, has become a cliche now because when I first saw it, that was one of the things that struck me. I know there were movies made before this that used that process, most notably Se7en, but this was the first one I had ever seen and I thought it was a very cool, unique look. The muted colors with the tabacco-like greens and silvers on the palette give the film an atmosphere of something not being quite right as well as an added harshness to the already horrific visuals. The lighting that's created through this process, with lots of contrasting shadows and very black darkness, add to the foreboding nature of the film and some of the visuals are actually quite beautiful as well as impressive. One image in the film that I love is when Erin and Kemper are walking through the forest on their way to the family's house. The image of those slightly darkly lit woods with the pronounced rays of silver light shining through the tree tops is straight out of a painting and it looks ridiculously beautiful. I also appreciate the cold, metallic look that this process gives to the inside of the slaughterhouse and the ugly look to the inside of the already disgusting gas station, all of which is enough to make you want to puke. So, in my opinion, the look of this film was one of the things that drew me to it in the first place. Unfortunately, though, that look has been done to death so much since then, not just in horror films but movies in general, that it's lost its magical quality and is now a cliche that I think needs to pulled back a little bit.
As with the original, the production design in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre '03 has a rawness to it that I think feels quite real. Like in the original, every environment is either downright filthy or, at the very least, cluttered like crazy. While I don't think the inside of the van here is quite as cluttered as the one in the original, it still has a lived-in feel to it and I like looking at a lot of the stuff in there, like that hula-girl knick-knack on the dashboard, the pinata full of marijuana, what appears to be a patterned blanket (which reminds of what Clint Eastwood wore around his shoulders in the Man With No Name trilogy) on the floor, and that MAD Magazine poster on the ceiling. The gas station that they arrive at is the pinacle of all those nasty country gas stations that we've come across on trips that take us through out-of-the-way places. You know just from looking at the outside that it's not going to be pleasant and it doesn't disappoint. The inside is rather old and dirty, with a feeling of choking, stuffy air filling the place, with the worst part being that compartment that the meat is kept in. It's filled with all sorts of disgusting stuff, including a whole pig head, and the thing has flies in it, nonetheless. Morgan's deadpan line upon seeing that sight is great, by the way: "Want some pig?" And, not surprisingly, the bathroom around back is digusting as well. You only see it for a couple of seconds but, trust me, it's enough. And that's all I'm going to say about that. My favorite location in the entire film is the Crawford Mill that the kids are told to go to in order to meet up with the sheriff. Really creepy, rundown place, with a lot of dark corners and spaces, chains hanging down from the ceiling, and some moisture dripping from the ceiling in spots as well. And even though I'm not the biggest fan of the character, the little space that Jedidiah is found sitting in is a creepy touch as well, with weird drawings and ornaments he's made out of various little objects (there's one that's made up of dentures, glasses, and I think what looks like a little toy skeleton) pinned to the wall. And there's one moment where everyone is startled by a loud metallic screech. I'm not exactly sure what caused that, if that was Jedidiaj exiting through a big metal door or if something just randomly creaked as you expect to hear in an old building (although that sound was pretty loud) or what but it was eerie to say the least. The Crawford Mill, to me, is a very unsettling place and just the kind of creepy, isolated location that I like to see in a horror film.
I like what they did with the family's house in this film. Instead of just being a little farmhouse, it's now a big, two-story plantation house with a lot of rooms, most of which we don't get to see. And like the Crawford Mill, I like that the place is isolated and out of the way, with this being in the middle of a big field of tall grass. Like there was in the original film, there are a bunch of vehicles belonging to previous victims that are placed in a small junkyard between the mill and the house. While there's no bone furniture inside the house (making this the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie to not have that in even the slightest respects), it's still a place that you would not want to be in. I heard that the filmmakers had to deal with some mold inside of that house and I think you can still kind of sense it when you look at the walls. It feels like there's a trace of it here and there. As with all of the locations here, the inside of the house is pretty dirty, with animals like little pigs running here and there, grimy residue on the furniture and floor, and weird stuff like a record silently skipping on a running phonograph and some old cartoon playing on a TV in a room when there's nobody in it. The grossest rooms in the entire house are the kitchen and the bathroom. When Andy goes into that kitchen while looking for Kemper, not only do you see those pieces of meat hanging from the ceiling but there are filthy dishes strewn on counters, chickens that are sitting here and there, random little pigs running through, and when Andy makes the mistake of opening up the refrigerator, he's immediately hit by an awful smell and judging from the not so fresh food in there, it's not surprising. As for the bathroom, it's like the one at the gas station in that we don't see much of it but what we do see is enough to get the point across. We've got a disgusting toilet and bathtub as well as some bizarre contraption that the family has rigged up so Monty can flush the toilet more easily... at least, I think that's what it was for. You see little of it that I'm not quite sure what it was actually. And finally, there's the basement, which is Leatherface's domain. The door to the stairs leading down to it is a sliding, metal door, similar to the one leading into the kitchen in the original, and I like the idea that there's a fish-eye, peephole on the door so Leatherface can keep an eye on what's going on in the main part of the house without having to come out. The basement is like hell on Earth in that it's a dank place with water dripping constantly from the ceiling (I'm not sure where all this water is coming from but there's enough to create a large puddle at the bottom of the stairs), the table where places the bodies of his victims for the blood to drain out, all sorts of horrific things strewn about like chain-hooks, fish-hooks, ornaments that appear to have human teeth attached to them, various bladed instruments like knives and scissors, old dentures, wire, what appears to be some sort of varnish and a razor blade (I don't want to know what he uses that stuff for), the meathook that Leatherface hangs Andy on, an old piano that's below that (don't know why that's there; does Leatherface play it when he's not butchering people?) and various body parts from past victims like hands, a severed head, and a seriously decomposed corpse. It really is the butcher shop of a madman and it helps bring home the idea that this place truly is a house of horrors.
There's not much to say about the trailer where Henrietta and the tea lady live. It's a typical trailer: very cramped and a little bit cluttered and dirty but not quite as much as the other locations. One location that's interesting is this small cabin that Erin and Morgan hide in while they're being chased by Leatherface near the end of the movie. I'm actually curious to know what this place once was. We see that it's a couch as well as a small chandelier in one room so someone used to live there but who? And why did they let it become a dump that's infested with rats? It has to belong to the family since it's so close to their house but, again, why did they abandon it? It's an interesting question. And finally, we have another great location: the slaughterhouse. After so much talk about slaughterhouses in the other films, I think it was appropriate that a sequence be set there. One thing that I like is the room that Erin falls into as soon as she enters the place. You know why I like it? Because it's pristine and clean. I like that irony that they only clean environment in the entire film is inside a slaughterhouse. Then there's the meat room that Erin hides in for a couple of minutes but ultimately is chased out of. They actually shot this in a real slaughterhouse so all the meat you see in that scene is real, including the one in which Erin takes cover (there are also skinned cow-heads hanging on one side of the room which, again, are real, adding an uncomfortable touch of reality to the setting). I have to give the filmmakers props for actually filming in a real slaughterhouse because I'm sure that, with a $9.5 million budget (that's not enormous but for a movie in this franchise, it was pretty big), they didn't have to do that. Also, interestingly enough, this leads to perhaps the only instance in one of these movies where somebody is actually cold instead of hot as crap. Since this was an actual freezer, Jessica Biel really was quite cold since she was in there with just a tanktop and blue jeans on so she's not acting when you see her shivering in that scene. Plus, that could have not been pleasant, having to stand in the middle of a slit open slice of beef. And finally, there's the locker room, where Erin hides from and ultimately uses to trick Leatherface so she can badly injure him and escape. Nice looking part of the slaughterhouse but it has an example of one major type of flaw that I think the film falls victim to, which I'll elaborate on shortly. Overall, though, like those of the original, the locations in this lend themselves to the dark, horrific story that's being told.
Like the original, while there's a lot of stuff in it that is rather sick, the remake doesn't have a lot of full on gore. It actually was supposed to be quite gruesome, with the aforementioned deleted shots of the hitchhiker's ear blowing off after she shoots herself as well as hideous shots of Leatherface slicing his chainsaw into Morgan's crotch, causing blood and intestines to pour out. But, a lot of this had to be cut to get an R-rating so we got is a film that still has some sick stuff but is quite light on gore. (I actually think that Morgan's death is more horrific when you just see Leatherface hang from the chandelier by the handcuffs he has on and then takes the chainsaw to him. You didn't need to see a bunch of gore in that instance.) What gore there is, though, was done well by Scott Stoddard and Greg Nicotero also did some minor effects as well. Most of the blood that is in the film comes in the form of splatter and spray: blood hitting the back window when the hitchhiker shoots herself and blood splattering on the TV screen when Leatherface clobbers Kemper with the sledgehammer, as well as some shots of blood dripping from the bottom of the kill table. Nicotero created a pretty realistic dummy of Lauren German, who played the hitchhiker, and while I have mixed feelings about Stoddard's design of the main Leatherface mask, I think he did a great job with the fake face mask of Eric Balfour. As I said before, that thing looks quite real to me. The most gruesome makeup effect is when Leatherface slices off Andy's leg. That looked very real and the quick shot of it added to the effect (as well as the way Mike Vogel yelled, "Shit!" afterward; he did sound like he was in real pain). And as I said before, that brief shot of Andy's fingernails cracking against the basement wall makes me wince every time, as well as when Leatherface puts salt into the cut off stump of his foot (that's just foul, right there). Monty's amputated legs look pretty good too and so does Leatherface's sliced off arm at the end of the movie, even if the sight of him trying to grab it while it's still holding onto the running chainsaw is kind of unintentionally funny. All in all, not a ton of makeup effects to talk about in this movie but the ones that are here are done well.
Seeing as how so many people felt that the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre was based on a true story, the filmmakers of the remake decided to take that idea and expand upon it. Not only do the trailers and TV spots have the caption, Inspired by a True Story (which should let you know right there that, while there is a connection between the movie and something that actually happened, it's a very loose one), but the film opens and closes with what is meant to be archival footage of the investigation of the actual crime. We see bodies being taken away on gurneys from the Hewitt house (though I'm not sure whose body that was supposed to be next to that creek), the collection of pieces of evidence such as bits of bone, fingernails, and so on, and the typing up of the police report as well as newspaper articles on the crime. We're then told that after thirty years of being kept in the cold cases division of the Travis County Police Department, the official files on the case have been made public, including a classified crime scene walkthrough that we see the beginning of right before the actual story starts and we come back to after Erin escapes. The walkthrough was conducted two days after the massacre but the investigating officer and the cameraman were attacked and killed by Leatherface, who had been hiding in the basement because, as we're told, the crime scene wasn't properly secured by the police department. I also like how the film concludes with the piece of information that the flashes of him captured on the footage of the walkthrough are the only known images of Leatherface, that he hasn't been seen since 1973, and that the case remains open to this day. I thought that was a nicely eerie way to end the movie, to give the idea that he could still be out there somewhere. It's also nice that they were able to get John Larroquette back to do the narration. I thought that was really cool and his deeper, more objective voice in this instance I think works just as well for this film as his younger, slightly more emotional voice did for the original. And I think this whole wraparound works as well, nicely complimenting the cinema verite style of the original, and I particularly like how the actual title is shown as the official designation of the crime on its report. It all adds to the idea that what we're seeing is an account of something that really happened.
Unfortunately, I think the remake has some flaws that, while not destroying it completely, tend to hurt that notion of this being a dramatization of real events. What it comes down to is that there's too much artifice here that reminds us that this is, indeed, a genre picture. The most blatant one to me is the shot that occurs after the hitchhiker shoots herself. After she does so, there's a shot that begins of the screaming and horrified faces of the kids and then, the camera pulls back, going through the girl's mouth and out of the hole in the back of her head, proceeding out the bullet hole in the back window, and ultimately pulling back to show the entire van as the kids get out of it as fast as they can. I really, really hate to rag on this shot because it is very impressive and it becomes even more when you learn that it was created without the use of digital technology except for the removal of the opening in the van's roof that they had to make. It took a lot of takes in order to get it right as well so I can appreciate the hard work that went into it. But, it's still a very cinematic shot and reminds us that this is a movie after all. Now granted, Tobe Hooper and cinematographer Daniel Pearl (who, oddly enough, was the director of photographer on this film as well) did do some interesting camera shots in the original, most notably the extreme closeups of Marilyn Burns' eye during the dinner scene, but those fit with the cinema verite-style of that film. If they had tried something like this in that movie, I guarantee that would have felt very out of place and, impressive as it is, would have been distracting. And, sadly, I feel that does kind of happen here as well (God, I hate saying that because it is an impressive piece of camerawork).
There are also a lot of cliched horror movie tropes in this film that damage the credibility as well. There are a few false scares, such as when Erin sees something moving around in a locker inside the Crawford Mill but when Kemper opens it up, it's just a possum, or when Morgan reaches inside the hood of one of the delapidated cars near the mill and acts like something has a hold of his hand. If you've seen a bunch of horror films, then you know these are probably going to be fake-outs since they're so common in the genre. Furthermore, given that we're aware of what the threat is in this film, i.e. an insane family and most notably a big guy with a chainsaw, we already know that these scares are going to be fake since none of them can fit inside these small spaces. And then there's the fact that some of these tropes don't make any logical sense in a movie that's claiming to be something that really happened. For one, why was that possum in that locker to begin with, especially since the door seemed to be closed very securely? And for another, near the end of the film when Leatherface opens that locker inside the slaughterhouse only to find a little piglet instead of Erin, why was that piglet in there? You could argue that Erin put it in there in order to fake Leatherface out but why would there be this random piglet roaming around the inside of a slaughterhouse? I know there were cows and stuff outside but did Erin just find that piglet and stuff it in her shirt, thinking that it might come in useful later? Another example of that would be where the hitchhiker was hiding that gun that she shot herself with, which I touched on earlier. And after Erin comes back to the Crawford Mill without Kemper, they randomly here this car horn nearby and they eventually find stick jammed on the steering wheel of a car with one end pressing on the horn. Why didn't they hear that before? And furthermore, who put that there and why? I tried to say to myself that maybe it was Jedidiah, who wanted them to follow the sound and, as a result, find that jar with the picture of the hitchhiker and her family inside it, as a sort of warning to the danger they're in. But that idea falls apart since I don't even think that was the same car as the one that had the pictures inside it. And who put those pictures in that car? Again, if it was Jedidiah, why didn't he just show them the pictures and tell them about how insane his family is? Finally, I've never understood who Erin was talking to on the phone at the Hewitt house when she's trying to contact the sheriff. Since Sheriff Hoyt is the only "lawman" nearby and since we see that he arrives at the mill while she's on that phone, who was she talking to? If that was a real sheriff's office that she was talking to, why didn't they ever arrive at the mill? I guess the answer to that could be that she's talking to Henrietta, seeing as how the voice we hear her talking to is most certainly a woman's if you listen closely (at least it was when the other line first picked up; not sure about the voice Erin's talking to when we cut back to her).
Finally, there's the most blatant error of all in this film: I don't quite believe that this movie is taking place in 1973. It's not because there are any modern devices present like cellphones, really fancy TVs, or anything of the like. They did good in that aspect. The giveaway for me, though, is the way the main cast of kids looks. They do not look or dress like people from the 70's. Granted, they're not wearing clothes that scream 2003 either in that they wear simple shirts, tanktops, and jeans but one or a couple of them should at least be wearing bell-bottoms or shirts with wide collars. And another thing: people who were that age in the 1970's simply did not look the way these kids do. Human evolution goes on, folks, and someone like Jessica Biel, as good-looking as she is, did not exist back then. There were some good-looking people back then, as there always are, but the look of someone such as Ms. Biel is indicative of the time she grew up in and it sure as heck isn't the 70's. And do I need to say anything about the way Mike Vogel looks? That's a modern day pretty boy model, not somebody who existed back then. They can talk about how much they like Lynyrd Skynyrd all they want but I don't believe that they're from that time period. I will say, though, that the way they made Jonathan Tucker look, with the sideburns and the glasses, does make him look a bit like someone from the 70's (heck, when I first saw the original after seeing this, I thought he and Allen Danziger looked alike) but he's the only real exception (although you could argue that Pepper does look a little like a hippy). And if you want to get really nitpicky, the brand of chainsaw that Leatherface uses in this film didn't exist in 1973. That's pushing it, I know, but I found out that is true. So, yeah, as much as I like this film, it's hard for me to believe that it takes place in 1973 and I do feel that, along with the other variations of artifice that I mentioned above, that notion does hurt the idea that this is supposed to be an account of something that really happened way back when.
The music by Steve Jablonsky is another part of the film that often gets a mixed reception from fans but it's another aspect of it that I rather like. I think all of the themes in the film work very well and I also think some are very memorable. The film opens with a soft piano melody that is later used for a moment between Erin and Kemper but it quickly becomes eerie and turns into a low, doom-laden theme as the archival footage begins. That theme is heard quite a bit throughout the film and it also comes back at the end for the last bit of the archival footage. There's a similar but even more sinister-sounding theme that plays after the hitchhiker and she begins babbling and crying about how she, "won't go back there." It hits home the feeling that there's something rotten in Denmark, so to speak. Another horrific theme is played when the kids drove off towards the Crawford Mill as Luda May watches out the window. You just get the feeling that these kids are screwed, that they're driving towards their own grave. One of my favorite pieces of music in the film is that very creepy piano theme that plays when they come across Jedidiah in the mill. It's not just the piano that makes it so eerie but it's creepy, sort of electronic sound behind that sounds almost like moaning. It's very effective for that scene. There's another low theme that you hear when Erin and Kemper come across the family's house as well as when Kemper is wandering around the house later on. Very foreboding bit of music but even better than that is this theme that starts really low but slowly builds and builds and builds to the point where you're expecting something to snap. You can hear this theme throughout the scene when Andy is snooping around the house up to when Leatherface attacks him and Erin, when Sheriff Hoyt is tormenting Morgan in the van, and near the end of the film when Hoyt is walking up to the big rig truck that he knows Erin is in. There are some really frantic attack themes for when Leatherface is chasing somebody, my personal favorite being the variation that plays when he's chasing Erin through the slaughterhouse and I also kind of like the one that you hear when he's chasing her after having killed Pepper. And that piece of music that plays when he attacks her in the cabin and ultimately kills Morgan is just great as well. Finally, there's the strong, orchestral piece of music that plays when Erin is forced to put Andy out of his misery. It's another piece of music that builds and builds and become absolutely tragic when she finally plunges the knife into him. Not only does it work well for that moment but I also like that it's the last bit of music that you hear over the ending credits, bringing home the notion of the horrific tragedy that happened to these kids who weren't looking for trouble but ended up coming across just absolute hell on Earth.
Knowing that the infamous camera sound from the original is just as iconic as the movie itself, the filmmakers made a smart decision in incorporating it into the remake. Just as it did before, it creates an eerie sound to go along with the creepy images, in this case the archival footage of the bodies being taken away as well as the blurred image of Leatherface that concludes the film. Even though I hadn't seen the original movie yet at this point, when I saw the trailer for the remake on that New Line Cinema DVD that I got and heard that camera noise, I knew exactly what it was because I remembered it from the Bryanston trailer for the original. I wasn't sure what movie the trailer was for when it first started, although I had my suspicions, but when I heard that sound, I was like, "Oh, it's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." Just shows how awesome that sound is that I remembered it from a trailer long before I saw the actual film. I also have to comment that I really like the sound of the chainsaw in this film. It's an odd thing to mention but the way that saw sounded in this movie was really distinct (I think they overlayed other sounds like that of a bear over the actual saw) and quite intimidating. I think I may like the sound of the saw in this movie the most out of all of them. Really frightening-sounding chainsaw, in my opinion.
One last thing I have to say about this movie is its unfortunate place in history. What I mean by that is that this is the film that started the remake trend that plagued movies, not just horror films but movies in general, for the rest of the 2000's and is still kind of going on. As I said at the beginning of the film, remakes before this were of old horror and monster movies from the 50's and 60's like House on Haunted Hill, The Haunting, Psycho, and so on. But, once The Texas Chainsaw Massacre '03 came out and was an enormous hit, making over $80 million, Hollywood took notice and before you knew it, just about every relatively famous horror from the 70's and 80's got remade. Immediately following this, you had the Dawn of the Dead remake (which, to be fair, was probably already in production when this movie was released), The Fog, Halloween, The Stepfather, and so on and so on. Even more disconcerting was that a lot of the remakes were produced by Platinum Dunes, including The Amityville Horror, The Hitcher, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Michael Bay has said that the goal of Platinum Dunes was to make a place that could create non-expensive movies and also give directors who had never made a movie before, like Marcus Nispel, their big break. It's a shame that the studio instead became known as the place responsible for remaking a lot of beloved horror films. And that's another thing: besides inspiring a bunch of remakes, this film's success spelt the end of the franchises created by the original films. There were almost no other sequels made to successful films from the 70's and 80's save for Seed of Chucky the following year and the ongoing direct-to-DVD Hellraiser sequels that Dimension was still cranking out. Think about it: Freddy vs. Jason, which came out a couple of months before this, was the last film for the original incarnations for both of those characters and Halloween: Resurrection the previous year ended up being the last sequel to the original film by John Carpenter. After this movie, everything started over from scratch and while I stand by the notion that this particular franchise needed to have the slate wiped clean after The Next Generation, I would also argue that those other franchises didn't. I personally wanted to see a Halloween 9 as well as a follow-up to Freddy vs. Jason that could have possibly involved Michael Myers and I was quite disappointed when I didn't get them. And let's face it, while some of these remakes were at least decent, most of them were not up to snuff and were soulless retellings of stories that had already been done well, which made the fact that we got them instead of those aforementioned follow-ups that we thought were going to get even more frustrating.
And just like his film, Marcus Nispel was the first in another annoying trend: music video directors who get their big break by remaking a beloved horror film. Now, don't get me wrong, music video directors can prove to be quite good filmmakers in their own right (David Fincher being the most shining example of that). But most of these guys, like Samuel Bayer, Rupert Wainwright, and Andrew Douglas, don't know anything other than where to point the camera. They don't know how to tell a good story or how to get good performances out of actors or even how to give their films a good look. Most of these movies look like music videos themselves, overusing the bleach bypass process that this film did well to the color correction technology that also became available in recent years. Personally, I have no problem with music video directors who want to make the leap directing feature films. That's cool. But I feel that it's necessary for them to hone their craft and become more and more adept at making films that have actual plots and stories rather than just doing a few music videos, commercials, or short films and then automatically making the upgrade to making a movie, let alone remaking a much beloved horror film. I just feel that this is not the way you do things. Anyway, the point that I'm getting to is that, because of the trend that it started that still hasn't quite died down, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre '03 gets a lot of hatred and resentment from genre fans. A lot of those probably don't like the film itself as well but many hate it just for what it inspired, which I personally think is unfair. Do I find it disconcerting that so many great films that didn't need to be remade ended up getting put through the machine? Oh, yeah. (The Rob Zombie Halloween films and the Nightmare on Elm Street remake in particular fill me with a lot of anger because I hate those movies so much.) But, on the other hand, I'm not going to hate a movie just because of an annoying trend it started because that's not the fault of the film or the filmmakers. There was no way to predict that would happen. Bottom line, I liked this movie when I first saw it before that trend kicked into high gear and I still do, despite all of the awful remakes that have come in its wake. It's not the movie's fault, guys. If you want to blame someone, blame the money-hungry execs who decided to capitalize on the enormous success of this movie.
While the original is and always will be a classic, I think the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a worthy companion piece to it. In my opinion, it's well-made, has some good characters and some decent acting, a look that was very unique at the time, truly horrific moments and images, great chase sequences and kills, and some very ominous, well done music. While it does have some flaws, on the whole I do think it's not only a great remake but a good horror film in its own right and among the myriad of remakes that have been made since its release, I still think it's one of the best. I also sincerely feel that this movie saved the franchise from becoming a big punchline after The Next Generation. If you don't like this movie because you're a die hard fan of the original who felt that it shouldn't have been touched, I understand. But if you hate the movie just because of the remake trend that it inspired, I would advise putting that aside and giving the movie another shot. I don't think it's quite as bad as you think it is. Regardless, I have liked this movie ever since I first saw it and, despite all of the crap I'm sure I will continue to get, nothing will make me change my mind.
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