The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Jessica Biel, R. Lee Ermey)
Here is a film that, on the one hand, has been reviled by critics but, on the other hand, plays like a demented roller coaster ride; and if a demented roller coaster ride is what you happen to be looking for, then the Texas Chainsaw Massacre should be enough to make you ignore the warnings of said critics and enjoy it for what it is. Yes, it is comprised of familiar set-ups and exhausted Agatha Christie-esque character write-outs, but at least these elements are expected. After all, it's a horror movie and the truth is, it is fully aware of its required boundaries as a horror flick and thus it opts to do the best it can within its expected framework. It is not the traumatizing travesty the trailers seem to indicate.
Massacre is a remake of a 1974 cult classic. Based very loosely on some true events that took place in a small town, the film depicts a car full of drugged-up, horny teenagers who are unsuspectingly headed for certain doom. They pick up a disturbed young woman on the side of the road and, after several ominous utterances, she puts a gun in her mouth and shoots herself (this sets up one of the more gruesome camera shots of the picture). Upon reaching the local gas station, the group of teenagers quickly discovers that the town seems impartial to the suicide, including the volatile sheriff, who seems more inconvenienced than concerned. One by one, the bodies begin to pile up, each lost soul meeting his or her maker thanks to a chainsaw-toting recluse named Leatherface. His specialty? Cutting up his victim's faces and applying them to his disfigured head as a costume.
Rarely have I seen more grisly and disgusting cinematic settings, and given that it is a horror movie, this is about right. Severed pig heads, dripping blood, buzzing flies, moldy foods, dirty people, disconnected limbs, filthy rats, sewage and bathtub back-ups: it's all here. The basement of the Hewitt home, in all its gory glory, rivals any setpiece from a larger summer blockbuster. It must have taken a lot of painstaking efforts to create such a dingy, dark and deadly locale. You can count me out as a prospective tourist there.
Jessica Biel stars as the hapless Erin, and, while her noble ingenuity stretches plausibility to the breaking point, there is no denying her rightful induction to the shortlist of slasher heroines of years gone by (which includes Neve Campbell from the Scream franchise, Sigourney Weaver from the Alien series, and Jamie Lee Curtis from Hallowe'en). R. Lee Ermey, best remembered as the tyrannical sargeant from Full Metal Jacket is insidiously demented here. His torturous depravity as the town sheriff clearly draws from a very dark recess inside the actor's psyche, and his frank performance results in one of the more chilling villains of recent memory. The other hapless teens are portrayed by Jonathan Tucker, Erica Leerhsen, Mike Vogel, and Eric Balfour, who essentially plays the same character as he does on TV's Six Feet Under. All are clearly having fun as they compete for unlikability for the viewer before their inevitable appointment with Leatherface as fodder.
Having never seen the original film, I have no point of reference for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, only the bevy of slasher flicks I've seen recently, such as Freddy vs. Jason, Wes Craven's They and The Ring. Frankly, Massacre was a lot easier to fall for than any of these because it doesn't toy with reality. That a backwoods man with a chainsaw could stalk a bunch of teens around is simpler to accept than trying to decipher how dead characters, ghosts and shadows all find ways to come back from the grave. This is not a great horror picture, mind you, but neither does it play for laughs (at least not the intentional kind) and, in a graphic way, it accomplishes what it sets out to do, which is to scare the bloody heck right out of you.
