The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) (BD)

-
texasm

Before we get into the details of the review, one thing I would like to mention is that I have never watched the 1973 Tobe Hooper release of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”  I own the 1973 version on Blu-ray, but I’ve never gotten around to watching it.  Maybe it has to do with the subject matter of the movie and the fact that I am not big into the horror genre.  So, for this review of the 2003 version, I chose not to watch the older version so I could evaluate the newer movie on its own merits.


The film begins with five friends led by Jessica Beil driving down a desolate highway and encountering a lonely girl.  The curious friends try to get some insight on how the girl ended up alone on the highway.  The friends then stop at a creepy farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.  From that point, the friends are chased by a deadly, chainsaw-wielding fiend (a.k.a Leatherface) played by Eric Balfour.  One by one, each of them falls prey to Leatherface.  It also appears that a small community of people, including the sheriff, support Leatherface and his grizzly acts.  For the few remaining friends, it becomes a long ordeal of trying to avoid eminent death.


The eerie farmhouse against the backdrop of gray-blue sky builds up the tension very well. As these characters navigate through the house, the scattered elements and state of the farmhouse raise suspicions that this is not the best place to be.  In addition, the dimly lit rooms, smelly house, and worn-down appliances and walls create an environment of tension through fear and terror.  Audiences get a definite sense of some form of cannibalistic activity around the farmhouse.  Eventually, all of this adds up to an overall creepy mood.  I liked how the director, Marcus Nispel, builds the tension from the very first scene by effectively using all these elements right up to the point where we get a first glimpse of the chainsaw-wielding villain.


At times some of it tends to be formulistic and predictable, like the scene that introduces Leatherface.  In this scene, Leatherface creeps up from behind to make his first kill.  We have seen this approach in countless films.  Not to say this is bad, but it tends to make the movie adhere to a predefined formula. The other aspect that doesn’t work well is the fact that we don’t get any insight on Leatherface’s  psychotic family.  I don’t know how this aspect is handled in the original movie.  As the majority of the film takes place in and around the farmhouse, the director could have added a few segments to the script that would have given details on the psychotic family residing in the farmhouse.  It’s an important aspect, which I thought could have made the movie much stronger.  Eventually, we find the movie thin on story and script.


In the acting department, Jessica Beil performs well, although there is nothing exemplary about her running around and screaming.  Eric Balfour does not have a single line in the movie.  As a killer, he does not even plan his kills.  Instead, he runs around with his chainsaw all the time looking for victims.  Not a smart thing to do if your victims are smart, as it turns out in the end.


In the past, movies like “Night of  the Living Dead” (1968), “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968), “The Exorcist” (1973), and “Dawn of the Dead” (1978) defined the horror genre.  However, in more recent times, the horror genre seems to have taken a nosedive. The biggest thing missing from most modern horror movies is the realistic depiction of fear and terror and doing so with minimal gore.  Most horror movies nowadays seem filled with an overwhelming amount of gore, yet they generate little tension or plot.  Building tension bit by bit is the key attribute that makes this 2003 “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” stand out, if every so slightly, from the rest of the horror movies of the last decade.  It will never be mistaken for a classic, but at least it tries.


Video:
Right from the outset, the color palette is muted. You don’t see any colors pop out as you would normally see in a modern action movie, the color palette a combination of whites, blacks, and grays. Having said this, I’m sure it was the director’s intent to reduce the colors so that the necessary gritty look could be preserved.  However, it appears in the process that the grain is sucked out from the transfer.  There is an occasional trace of grain, but I would have expected to see more of it in the basement and nighttime outdoor scenes.  The blacks are solid, especially in the night and basement scenes.  Apart from this minor quibble about the transfer, the rest of the movie looks pristine in hi-def.  The Blu-ray transfer is encoded at a healthy bit rate of 25 Mpbs.


Audio:
For the first forty minutes or so, the movie is mostly front-channel driven.  The dialogue is clear with occasional atmospheric noises.  There are a few instances in the movie when we get surround sound, but apart from that the movie mostly banks on dialogue for its sound design.  Being an action horror movie, one would have expected an increased use of guns.  However, I think there is only one gunshot in the whole movie.  The only weapon you hear is the chainsaw, which is obviously very clear and terrifying. New Line has included a Dolby TrueHD soundtrack for this release.


Extras
Included in this edition are three audio commentaries; an alternate opening and ending sequence; and several featurettes, beginning with “Chainsaw Redux: Making a Massacre,” n which the crew discuss key scenes from the original 1973 movie and comment on their motivation in making the remake, pointing out differences between the 1973 and 2003 versions.  Then there are some screen tests of Jessica Beil, Eric Balfour, and Erica Leerhsen; the featurette “Ed Gein: The Ghoul of Plainfield”; a music video; and few trailers and TV spots.


Parting Thoughts:
The original Tobe Hooper version of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” was released in 1974.  In a traditional sense, fans would have hoped to see a special edition DVD of the 1974 TCM in 2003 and be done with it.  Instead, almost thirty years later, it gets a remake by Marcus Nispel that seems unnecessary and forced.  There are a lot of things that the 2003 release does right, but it will always be compared to its superior original.  The 2003 version is a horror movie on drugs that is loud and obnoxious at times.  Having said this, no one would think of the chainsaw and basement in the same manner as they do now.  This Blu-ray excels in both the audio and video departments.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bad Boys (1983)

-
When I consider the list of the greatest actors alive today, Sean Penn ranks among top five actors in my list. Winner of two Academy awards in the Best Actor category (a rare occurrence) and a three-time nominee in the same category, Penn has become one of the most influential yet underrated actors of his generation. He shot to a top-rated actor with his performance in Tim Robbin’s “Dead Man Walking” (1995), later following it up with another notable performance in Woody Allen’s “Sweet and Lowdown” (1999) for which he received an Oscar nomination. There is no doubt that his earlier movies set the stage for challenging roles later in his acting career. After starting his film career in Amy Heckerling’s coming-of-age comedy “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982), Penn then starred as the leading actor in a brutal prison drama, “Bad Boys” (1983). It was an unusual career choice to sign up for a non-mainstream, violent film. But looking back, his performance in “Bad Boys” reminded me of hi
Read more

2016: Obama's America

-
Image
As the 2012 Presidential race gathered steam, we saw political candidates and political pundits working overtime to acquire vital gains in votes. That is obvious given the nature of the closely-fought election. But we also had filmmakers and authors working within their respective media to produce materials that were bound to influence voters. At one point, in 2012 year alone, there were six anti-Obama books in the Amazon’s top-100 best-sellers list. To name a few books: Paul Kengor’s “The Communist,” Dinesh D’Souza’s “Obama's America: Unmaking the American Dream” and “The Roots of Obama's Rage” on which this film is based, then Mark Levin’s “Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America,” David Limbaugh's “The Great Destroyer: Barack Obama's War on the Republic,” and Edward Klein's "The Amateur." On the funny side, one has to give credit to our President; his name brings money to big publishing houses and keeps writers busy all year around. It
Read more

Django Unchained

-
Image
Ever since writer-director Quentin Tarantino shot to fame with “Reservoir Dogs” (1992) and “Pulp Fiction” (1993), fans have eagerly awaited his films. The reason Tarantino stands out from the rest is because of his talent to continuously push the boundaries of the film medium in his own distinctive way. Considering his two decades of filmmaking experience, it is not difficult to anticipate what Tarantino might have in store for his audience in his latest film, 2012’s “Django Unchained.”  From the opening shot, it is obvious Tarantino has reinvented himself yet again. This time around, he dabbles with the spaghetti-Western action flick, and the results are superb. “Django Unchained” mixes satire, comedy, action, drama, and violence with the most important of Tarantino’s filmmaking characteristics, his handiness to introduce “unexpected” elements into the narrative. Set in the pre-Civil War era, the film’s opening, warm-looking shot representing a barren mountainous
Read more