- Overview
After picking up a traumatized young hitchhiker, five friends find themselves stalked and hunted by a chainsaw-wielding killer and his family of equally psychopathic killers.
- Release Date
21 May 2003
- DirectingMarcus Nispel
- Budget
$9,500,000.00
- Revenue
$107,967,319.00
- Stars
Videos
User Reviews
See moreCharles Tatum
30 September 2023
Producer Michael Bay steered this remake of the infamous 1970's horror flick, without bringing in anything new. When I first saw the trailer for this version of the story, I thought it looked a lot like a hurried sequel to the contemporary silly release "Wrong Turn." Five youths on their way to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert pick up a young hitchhiker who commits suicide in the back of their van. Looking for help, and a little common sense, they stumble upon a weird family and their chainsaw wielding offspring. Much violence and such ensues. While the first TCM was not perfect, I eventually learned to love the shaky camera, lousy sound, and cheap look. One reason that film worked for me was the fact that much of the horror took place in blinding daylight, the cast was hot and uncomfortable, and it showed. In this version, even with the original's director of photography, most of the shots are too calculated. The horrors in the dark are not all that horrifying. This might be the rantings of a jaded horror film fan, but I never got the same feeling of unease as I did in the first film. Much of the original's story has been changed as film makers tried to keep the audience guessing by not doing a shot by shot remake, like Gus Van Sant's "Psycho." The absolute lunacy of the first film's family was strange enough, here the members are more dimwitted than scary. This lessens the impact of Leatherface's scenes. You know he is the worst it can get, you don't have an equally sick family to fall back on. One disappointing scene involves the heroine Erin (Jessica Biel) running to a trailer and meeting two women who will obviously not help her. Instead of being a tense moment, where mind games involving drinking a seemingly harmless cup of tea could be played out, the women are there for nothing more than exposition, blaming Leatherface's penchant to kill on being teased when he was younger for a degenerative skin disease. The five victims all meld together, Nispel's direction is okay, but the cinematography is too nice for this type of horror film. The black and white scratchy scenes recall TV's "Millennium" or "The Blair Witch Project." If I would compare "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" to anything, it would be the terrible sequels that came out after the original "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" to that point. Just one was watchable, "Leatherface," but with the exception of Part 2, they were all simply remakes of the original film. Most direct to video sequels do that now, and while this film tries to be something different, it is simply a remake that cannot match the original. As Leatherface and the clan enter a new millennium, their wrinkles were showing.
More Like This
The Death King
Seven episodes, each taking place on a different day of the week, on the theme of suicide and violent death.
See more
Dorothy Mills
When a gloomy, God-fearing island community is rocked by the assault of an infant, a psychiatrist is called in to examine Dorothy Mills, the...
See more
Night of the Creeps
In 1959, an alien experiment crashes to earth and infects a fraternity member. They freeze the body, but in the modern day, two geeks pledging a...
See more
Changing Life - Der Fluch Der Zombies
A few years ago there was a strange incident in a wooded area near Braunschweig. A teacher disappeared with his class during a night hike without a...
See more
Zepo
Time ago, a winter morning, a little girl went out looking for firewood, she went away from home and came across a blood trail... she followed it.
See more
The Ring
Rachel Keller is a journalist investigating a videotape that may have killed four teenagers. There is an urban legend about this tape: the viewer...
See more
Frenzy
After a serial killer strangles several women with a necktie, London police identify a suspect—but he claims vehemently to be the wrong man.
See more
Silent Hill
Rose, a desperate mother takes her adopted daughter, Sharon, to the town of Silent Hill in an attempt to cure her of her ailment. After a violent...
See more
The Ninth Gate
An all-expenses-paid international search for a rare copy of the book 'The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows' brings an unscrupulous book dealer...
See more
Angel Heart
A down-and-out Brooklyn detective is hired to track down a singer on an odyssey that will take him through the desperate streets of Harlem, the...
See more
Freaks
A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him...
See more
Funny Games
When Ann, husband George, and son Georgie arrive at their holiday home they are visited by a pair of polite and seemingly pleasant young men. Armed...
See more
Top of the Food Chain
An isolated Canadian town (populated by the weirdest group of people this side of Saturn) has seen its share of problems. First the nut factory...
See more
Cannibal Holocaust
A New York University professor returns from a rescue mission to the Amazon rainforest with the footage shot by a lost team of documentarians who...
See more
Eaten Alive!
A woman's search for her missing sister leads her to the jungles of New Guinea, where she and an expatriate guide encounter a cult leader and...
See more
Cannibal Ferox
Three friends out to disprove cannibalism meet two men on the run who tortured and enslaved a cannibal tribe to find emeralds, and now the tribe is...
See more
Cannibal Apocalypse
Released from captivity in Vietnam, two American Army officers return to civilian life and discover they have acquired an insatiable taste for...
See more
The Darkness of the Road
A single mother and her young daughter are driving on a desolate road in a moonless desert. After meeting a young female hitchhiker at a gas...
See more
Day of the Dead
A small group of scientists and soldiers take refuge in an underground missile silo where they struggle to control the flesh-eating dead that walks...
See more
Event Horizon
In 2047, a group of astronauts are sent to investigate and salvage the starship Event Horizon which disappeared mysteriously seven years before on...
See more