Movie Malcontent / THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE

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THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE / Malcontent's Mark: B+

October 15th, 2003

Erin: Jessica Biel
Kemper: Eric Balfour
Pepper: Erica Leerhsen
Andy: Mike Vogel

Written by Scott Kosar.
Directed by Marcus Nispel.
Rated R

Going into the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I steeled myself for the worst. The movie is produced by Michael Bay, director Armageddon and Bad Boys II, the virtual ringleader of all that’s hollow, phony, and bloated in Hollywood. And his producing partner is none other than Mike Fleiss, the brainchild behind the mind-numbingly tasteless reality shows Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?, The Bachelor, and Are You Hot? The Search for America's Sexiest People. You’d think that would be enough to completely ruin any movie.

It’s more foreboding when you check out the inexperience of the film’s helmers. You have first-time screenwriter Scott Kosar, whose miniscule experience in the film industry actually exceeds that of novice feature film director Marcus Nispel.

And to add insult to injury, these outsiders to the horror genre boldly decide to take on the formidable task of remaking a highly treasured sacred cow of modern splatter films. Such a blasphemous act is reminiscent of Gus Van Sant’s botched attempt to remake Psycho.

Well, it turns out that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is this year’s second biggest surprise triumph next to the Pirates of the Caribbean, which had its own awkward pedigree, being based on a Disney World ride and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.

After horror film disappointments like Cabin Fever and Freddy vs. Jason, both lacking in raw scares, I am pleasantly surprised to say that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the scariest movies I’ve seen in a long time.

The storyline of the remake remains the same: five friends are driving from Mexico to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert in Dallas. They stop to pick up a ragged hitchhiker, who promptly inflicts violence to herself in their van. As they try to clean up the mess, they meet members of a rural family who would sooner chase you with a chainsaw than offer you homemade apple pie.

I’ve always felt that what often makes a horror film scary is not monsters jumping out of the shadows, but sustaining a palpable dread. With a movie like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the title itself lends to the dread - from the moment the movie begins, you’re waiting for the movie to deliver the promise of its title. Yet the dread hangs heavy beyond the first chainsaw attack, and the dread is often heaviest between chainsaw violence. There’s truly terrifying scene between the possibly deceitful Sheriff Hoyt, played by the always frightening R. Lee Ermey, and Morgan, the loser-type of the bunch (Jonathon Tucker). The sheriff forces Morgan to use his gun to re-enact a character’s suicide, all the way up to the moment when she put the gun in her mouth and fired.

Many of the leads undergo slow torture at the hands of the various unsavory types. Although we assume only one will survive, the tension over who will be killed and when remains taut throughout the film. The audience could quite possibly feel suffocated by the thickness of the dread in this movie.

I have to say, however, a LOT of the credit goes to cinematographer Daniel Pearl and production designer Greg Blair. The grainy texture and sepia tones may be clichéd in music videos, but here they add just the right texture to the dark and disturbing images. Many horror films are set in rural areas, yet the countryside often seems to be strangely void of typical countryside landmarks. In Massacre, however, there are abandoned tractors, forgotten windmills, hollowed out factories, decrepit slaughterhouses, barbed wire fences - even bales of hay and mooing cows are included! And the old plantation house, wherein lies most of the dark-lit horror, has a mysterious light coming from its back yard, giving it a truly spooky look at night.

Credit also needs to go to the casting director. Not just for the leads, though all five exhibit vulnerability that makes you empathize with their horrific situations – a rarity in splatter films. But also, collected in Massacre is a convincing supporting cast of backwood pariahs, many with awkward bone structure and sunken eyes.

Director Nispel and writer Kosar make several wise decisions in their remake. Though Kosar wisely changes little from the original’s screenplay by Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper, he doesn’t slavishly crib the same surprises. In fact, fans of the original can expect their expectations to be cleverly played with. One of the major scares of the original was when Leatherface, he of chainsaw legend, chases the young heroine through the dark woods for seemingly several nerve-twisting hours. In the remake, however, the chase through the woods seems cut short. Or is it?

As a respectful nod toward the original, Nispel borrows the sound of the flashbulb crackle used during the first horrifying five minutes of the original. He uses it perfectly to heighten the tension. Also, Nispel recruits John Larroquette, narrator of the original, to deliver a brand new voice-over for the remake.

As for the new twists from the original that work well, we get to see Leatherface try on one victim’s face, then wear it while attacking the victim’s girlfriend. There’s also a nod to the Blair Witch Project, Massacre’s equal in modern horror successes: in the remake’s crime scene investigation, police use videotape instead of flash photography. The end effect is eerily similar to Blair Witch. And Nispel knows horror through the ages well enough to realize that the old trick of having the killer’s arms breaking through the wall behind a victim is no longer the cliché it once was, it’s a refreshing return to a horror movie scare from an earlier era.

Nispel and Kosar do, however, break a cardinal rule of horror by showing more than is necessary. Unlike the original, we briefly see Leatherface unmasked. Also, we hear Leatherface’s backstory – something about a skin-eating disease. As the original proved by excluding these revelations, it’s not what you see that’s scary, it’s what you don’t see - the imagination is a far scarier than anything Hollywood could conjure up.

There’s a moment in the original when the camera focuses on Leatherface pondering something. Could he be in anguish, confused about his motivations, contemplating the consequences of his actions? It’s a quiet moment, a moment of possibly witnessing the human suffering under a self-made mask - which makes the original Leatherface that much more disturbing when he wields the chainsaw with furious rage and compulsion.

The remake successfully reintroduces a new generation to hardcore horror. It doesn’t have the socio-political subtext of the original, but it does invoke a practically equal amount of “staring into the void” type terror. Michael Bay’s involvement doesn’t make up for his past misgivings, but he deserves recognition for refilling the near-dry horror reservoir with high-grade Texas moonshine.

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