FauxNixon

Director Marcus Nispel has managed to make an interesting contribution to 2003’s movie lineup, taking a B-movie originally made in the 1970s on a minuscule budget, and turning it into a B-movie made with a grand Hollywood budget. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre of 2003 makes some changes to plot, characters, and other miscellaneous aspects of the original version, but fails to succeed in turning it into a quality horror film. For those unfamiliar with the storyline, essentially, a group of teenagers in the 1970s are driving across Texas and are forced to stop in a small town and through an awkward chain of events, are confronted with a family of freakish cannibals. The standard horror plot of attractive young men and women being brutally killed one after another, lots of screaming, lots of running, and so forth all take place during the course of the film’s one hour and thirty eight minute run-time. Nispel makes no changes to the lack of character development, cliched horror plot, cheap scares, and instead settles on a handful of special effects, an aggressive marketing campaign, and a few minor changes to the plot.

Sheriff Hoyt, played to perfection by R. Lee Ermey, may be the one element of the film that has any redeeming value whatsoever. Ermey manages to bring some much-needed levity to this situation with his characteristic blend of bizarre behavior, and authoritatively congenial manner. Dark humor seems to be one of his strong areas, that unfortunately, is not often taken advantage of by directors with whom he works. To Hollywood: Please stop remaking poor quality movies into worse quality movies. To Marcus Nispel: Please do not pretend you can direct with any semblance of skill again. To R. Lee Ermey: A job done as well as it could have been given the film. And finally, to the film-going public, the bottom line for you is to avoid this film in the theaters. It may be good for a cheap thrill once it arrives on video, but for now, it’s just a waste of your money if you’re expecting anything more than a big budget porn movie without the sex and nudity.