The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Directed by Marcus Nispel [Other horror films: Frankenstein (2004), Friday the 13th (2009), Exeter (2015)]

This won’t be a very long review, because quite honestly, I can’t think of much to say.

Throughout the whole of the film, I just felt it very bland. It’s not bad, per se, but nothing really did anything for me. The gore was top-notch, with some solid dismemberments and impaling on meat hooks and the like, but with the glossy style the movie sometimes took, it sort of weakened the impact.

One thing, gore aside, that this movie did really well were the sets. The Hewitt house looked great, with a really creepy exterior and fantastically-done basement, with a whole mess of random horrific stuff crammed down there. The meat packing plant was appropriately creepy also, so kudos there.

As for the actors/actresses involved, none of them were either that great or that bad. They just felt sort of there, going through the motions. I didn’t care for R. Lee Ermey’s character, but he did okay. As Leatherface, Andrew Bryniarski did decent, and looked rather menacing. As for Jessica Biel and company, really, nothing good nor bad stands out. Biel was certainly attractive in some scenes, which is what they were going for, it seems, but other than that, eh.

The movie starts off a bit sluggish, and doesn’t really pick up until about forty minutes in, and when it does, it’s a smooth ride forward, but I just couldn’t shake the idea of how bland I felt the movie was. It has it’s positive factors, but from 2003 alone, I can think of other horror flicks I’d rather watch (such as Dead End or House of 1000 Corpses), so ultimately, I wasn’t much impressed this time around.

6/10