What I find most interesting about this
His trademark showiness and glossiness is all over the movie. The film looks as if it were filmed through a grimy lens to make everything a little more gruesome and dirty than it actually is. As night falls, fog envelops the plantations and marshes of Texas (no, that‘s not how I think of Texas either) so much so that I expected Sherlock Holmes to come out of the weeds only to be cut in half by Leatherface. The narrator is good enough to inform us of his name even though the case remains unsolved and there is no record in the movie of the characters calling him this. That’s very polite of him, I think. Then the clouds open up and rain pours and the fog disappears. Most fog works in the opposite direction, but I don’t have the urge to teach Michael Bay the finer points of meteorology
This crass commercialization is also being marketed as “inspired by a true story.” Theoretically, they mean the case of Ed Geim, a Wisconsin native arrested in the 1950s who was arrested for killing some neighbors, eating them, making furniture out of their bones, and digging up some corpses and doing the same. Ed Geim’s case has nothing to do with Texas, chainsaws, or massacres. I guess that’s what people mean when they take “creative license.” And the movie really wants you to believe that it all took place; it takes many pains to mention how real it all was and even starts off with grainy “video footage” of police investigating the crime scene. If you don’t know how that footage ends then you have the IQ of the kids. Speaking of…
You’ll notice that I have not mentioned a thing about the plot. Five teenagers pick up a hitchhiker and get chased around by a freak with a chainsaw. Need I say more? No? I will, anyway. Scream made fun of horror movie characters doing stupid things seven years ago; you might think that moviemakers had learned since then. You’d be wrong. I don’t think I’ve witnessed this many stupid decisions by a group of people since watching a Bears game (I don’t actually watch them, but I have a roommate who keeps me well-informed).
The dialogue is unintentionally hilarious. After one of the main characters commits suicide they sit around talking about death and why she chose them to die in front of them. This superficial deepness isn’t convincing for a second. You can practically see them waiting to hear the whirr of a chainsaw to put them out of their misery, and then the obvious disappointment when they realize it’s just a lawnmower.
There’s some fun scenery chewing by R. Lee Ermey (the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket). Unfortunately, after about ten minutes, you realize that he’s doing the same character he has always done. Now this is a fun character, but what does that say when the twentieth variation on a theme is the best part of a movie? By the way, Jessica Biel is in this movie. If she wants to show off her prowess as an actress, I can only suggest doing other things. When a sprinkler system goes off for no other reason but to show our heroine jiggling in a wet tank top you can’t help but laugh at how tired the script is.
Finally, the movie ended. I got up, battered, but not broken from this boring, boring horror movie that had managed not to really scare me once. I think that’s the most impressive thing about 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; not once was I really frightened for the characters or about any of their situations. I knew they were going to die and didn’t really care. I just knew that the sooner they died, the sooner the movie would be over. I cannot quite give the movie an F, for it is not so bad it’s good.