PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 10/22/03)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,a Michael Bay produced remake of the classic 1974 film, initially seems pointless and destined to fail. In Hollywood though, it's all about the bottom line. The filmmaker's motive is clear: While nearly every young filmgoer is familiar with the title, most haven't seen Tobe Hooper's original.

While on the surface, this retelling of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is essentially a glossy version of the first (the actors belong on the pages of Details Magazine instead of on a back road in Texas), it still manages to pull off an adequate amount of scares, when compared to most horror flicks in theaters this Halloween season.

From the first frame, rookie film director Marcus Nispel wants to make sure that everyone knows he’s done his homework by supplying an opening montage (narrated again by John Larroquette) explaining what happened to those four teenagers in Texas in the early seventies. Using the same grainy, documentary-style footage that characterized the first Massacre, Nispel tells the audience that Hooper’s version was just a fictionalized account, and that the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre is what really happened. Clearly, he is straddling the line of retelling a film and paying homage. Either way, the new Chainsaw Massacre has abandoned the creepiness and ambience that made the original linger in the conscience of the movie-going public. In its place is a movie crowded with generic, slasher-film scare tactics.

The original Leatherface was an undefined, semi-retarded killer—an uncontrollable force, not unlike Jaws, and equally as terrifying. Here, the filmmakers attempt to delve deeper into Leatherface’s motivation, attributing his murderous rampages to an illness he had as a child. As a result of a mediocre backstory, Leatherface becomes just another mask-wearing psycho stalking large-breasted women.

As for the victims, a group of five teenage potheads driving the backroads of Texas, they are more props than characters.  Lead by Seventh Heaven's Jessica Biel, they all serve their purpose within a horror film: To look good, get scared, and then get disemboweled. Biel rises above the rest of the cast, as a compelling protagonist in a role that mostly requires her to scream and run around in a tight tank top.

In the end, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre did not need to be remade, and though Nispel's version is now center-stage in every multiplex in America, it's no original.

—Addison MacDonald