The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

9/30/2023

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, a

4/30/2026

Clearly this is not as good as this can get, but with this particular iteration, this is what we got. It is nowhere near as frightening as the original, and a lot of that is probably due to the characters not being relatable, which is why you don't feel any tension, and without tension, the "scary" is just bland noise and screeching. If the characters had built a connection with the audience that might have been different, but that wasn't to be here. This is techically proficient, and looks good enough, but it isn't a horrormovie worthy a franchise like this. This is lower tier, for sure.