Tim Burton has a lot to answer for. Even since his poor, but finanically successful "re-imagining" of Planet Of The Apes, it seems Hollywood is falling over itself to produce as many "new" films using the names of classic ones, but little else. Few of these films have much in common with the original films, aside from an ability to trade off of an already established name. Unfortunately, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is little different.
I suppose I should point out that I'm not particularly a fan of the original film, so this is a hardly going to be a "they changed all these things and ruined it" type rant. The overwhealming feeling I felt through the film was one of sheer boredom. There was absolutely nothing within the film that I hadn't seen elsewhere. The film plays as some mutated hybrid of the original Massacre film and the generic 90s teen slasher films.
The plot itself is simplistic enough, and one that has been done to death by now. A group of teenagers are out in the middle of nowhere, and they get picked off one by one by some maniac. The exact specifics of this are irrelevant, as if you've seen just a handful of these films, you certainly won't be surprised by this one at all. All of the regular elements are here: the gruesome deaths, people walking stupidly into situations where they will get killed, the car not starting when it needs to and so on. The only viewers who will be surprised by the events here will be people watching their first horror film, and even they could probably work it out.
To play devil's advocate for a moment, these cliches can be perfectly acceptable if the film supporting them is strong enough in other regards. There is no other way to explain the continued success of the slasher film than to write it off that people simply find them fun. We accept generic events in these films as we are comfortable with them. I really wanted to be able to do the same with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but instead I just found myself constantly checking to see how much more I had to sit through.
Performance wise, all of the actors do their jobs adequately enough, although no one really stands out. Seeing as all of the characters seem to need to do is run around screaming and swearing a lot, I suppose this wasn't too much of a challenge, but on this level, it kind of works. The only weak link appears to be Eric Balfour, who seems to over act his role in a big way. Other than that, everyone does their job, until of course they are all picked off one a time.
The only real praise I have for the film is in the visual effects area. Marcus Nispel handles the visual direction well, which is all well and good, but seems unable to direct things like suspense to an appropriate level, which ultimately fails a film of this nature. This seems to be an unfortunate trend in directors who move from music videos to film,. and one I hope will be rectified in time.
Overall, unless you really enjoy the generic slasher cliches and aren't looking for anything new from a film at all, I'd advise one to give The Texas Chainsaw Massacre a miss and look for something with a little more depth.
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Production Year: 1995 - Horror - Director: Bill Condon - Original Language: English - Classification: 18 years and over - Starring: Tony Todd, Kelly Rowan, Timothy Carhart, Veronica Cartwright
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