I see a lot of horror movies, even the bad ones.  Kim and I consider ourselves fans of the genre, so we will see them out of obligation if nothing else.  I’d like to think that we are connoisseurs.  We watch the obscure stuff, the foreign stuff, the indie stuff, and the mainstream stuff when we can.  I can honestly say that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) is the cruelest and meanest horror movie I’ve seen in recent memory.

TCM03 starts off like the original, some kids driving through Texas pick someone up walking down the road and all hell breaks loose.  That is basically all the plot you need to know, and all the story you’re going to get.  This isn’t The Usual Suspects after all, this is horror.  And it isn’t really modern horror.  It goes back to old horror movies where the killers were villains and you were afraid of them.  I think this coming out the same year as Freddy vs Jason shows how far horror films have come.  In those movies, Freddy and Jason are the main characters.  You cheer for them, and the kids are just there to fill the body count.  You want more people to get killed to see how it will happen.  In TCM03, Leatherface is not someone you cheer for and you’ll find yourself desperately wanting these kids to get away from this house.  This will sound strange, but I think TCM03 brings humanity back to horror.  I was pulling for the kids.  Unlike most modern horror movies, there is not a forced soundtrack full of up-and-coming bands that does not help the story.  There is some Skynyrd to get you in the time period at the beginning, and that is it.  The rest of the music is symphonic, and some very good music at that.

If you’re a fan of the original, I think you’ll find some nice homage shots and sequences to it, but do not go in expecting a shot-by-shot remake.  The 03 version is a lot more serious.  We can all put the original up on a pedestal and praise its greatness, but lets face it, it degrades into ridiculousness and being outright silly near the end.  I love the final shots of the film, but the third act is just comedy.  TCM03 never pushes over into comedy.  It has a few (very few) light-hearted moments, but once the movie gets going it stays on you to the end.  I actually liked Andrew Bryniarski’s portrayal of Leatherface better than Gunnar Hansen’s (all you film geeks that just hit your flame mail macro can stick it in your ass.  He’s better).  Bryniarski is a giant, and he isn’t wearing a torn up three piece suit with a bad wig.  He also isn’t screaming like a woman through a lot of the movie.  I think he is flat-out scarier.  I think it also has a lot to do with the lighting and the mood of the movie, but also the mask is better.  His brow line is not sympathetic, it is much more vicious.  Which it should be, after all, he is killing people with a chainsaw and there is very little sympathy involved in that.

Leatherface 1974                                        Leatherface 2003

Not only is this a very scary movie, it is a beautiful movie as well.  It features some of the best lighting and composition of any movie I’ve seen this year.  It’s almost distracting, and a complete 180 from the original which uses a raw, documentary style to make it feel more real.  The scenes are dark and wet with a lot of direct light and fast falloff.  It looked to me like a David Fincher movie.  Director Marcus Nispel used the same cinematographer that did the original, but the two movies look completely different.

The acting in the movie works, but is nothing exceptional.  Jessica Biel plays a much stronger character than Marilyn Chambers played in the original, but she still runs and hides and is generally afraid.  Once I saw she was wearing a white tank top, I knew she was going to get soaking wet at some point...and she does.  As I said earlier, Andrew Bryniarski does an excellent job as Leatherface, but the only person that is really given a chance to shine is R. Lee Ermy as the sheriff.  He just chews up every scene he is in.

I really liked TCM03.  It was much better than it should have been, and I think if you take away the time they came out and cultural impact and all that, you could say that TCM03 is almost a better scary movie than the original.  I've read that they are already planning a sequel, which raises an interesting question: will they do their own Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, or will they remake the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 from 1986.  I really hope that they decide to do their own, because TCM2 leaves a lot to be desired as a horror movie.  Now, it is obvious that Tobe Hooper was not trying to make another great horror movie.  Look at the poster for TCM2, and this similar poster from a popular movie that came out the year before.

I feel the need to point out, however, that neither this nor the original are based on actual events at all.  There are some similarities to the Ed Gein murders, but when Kim and I saw Tobe Hooper at a screening of the original TCM, someone asked that question and he said absolutely not.  There were no cannibal chainsaw killers in Texas…ever.  He said he got the idea for the movie as he was working at a hardware store.  The store was full of people and he was thinking of the best way to get through all those people when his eyes hit on a chainsaw.  That was the origin of the story, straight from the man himself.  Interesting side note, the truck driver at the very end of the original TCM is named Ed Guinn, very similar to the Ed Gein that people will tell you the movie is based on.  Those people are wrong, and you should feel free to correct them…violently if necessary.