The Beast Reviews: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (The Remake)

I have previously reviewed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning and will now move on to the 2003 remake of the 1974 instant classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

There are two main reasons that I, for the most part, am against remakes.
1) Why remake something that is already near perfect?
2) The bigger issue is this: Typically what makes a film, especially a horror film, so powerful and memorable are the unsettling elements of the picture that ultimately form the overall concept. When remakes are filmed, the filmmakers reverse the order to try and capture the "feel" of the original. Usually they become so obsessed with the concept that they completely miss the unsettling details that gives the concept its true shape.

This 2nd point is the overriding problem with TCM 2003. They have the concept down fairly well. A group of kids in a van in the middle of nowhere runs into trouble, then into more trouble, and then into lots of trouble. The issue I had with the movie is when they got to the point of "trouble", the imagery, acting, photography, etc, was uninspiring to say the least, and to make up for it, they appealed to the cool gore factor. As my experience with "The Beginning", I was quickly wanting to pop in the real movie and get that weird feeling all over again.

The ending, which seemed to me to be a Blair Witch rip off, was just absolutely pointless. I can now say I have seen all the films in the TCM franchise and I would advise any intermediate horror fan to stay away from most of the films in the series, save the original and maybe part 2.

The Beast's Paw Rating: 1 out of 4 Paws.