The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Directed by Marcus Nispel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre follows several friends, including Jessica Biel’s Erin and Jonathan Tucker’s Morgan, as they run afoul of a murderous backwoods clan en route to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. There’s little doubt that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre fares surprisingly well in its engaging, briskly-paced opening half hour, as Nispel, working from Scott Kosar’s screenplay, delivers a slick yet watchable endeavor that benefits from the relatively affable efforts of its various performers – with the mostly-compelling atmosphere heightened by an ongoing emphasis on striking, suspenseful sequences (eg the protagonists pick up Lauren German’s mysterious hitchhiker). It’s disappointing to note, then, that the picture slowly-but-surely wears out its welcome as it progresses into an increasingly tedious and repetitive second half, with Nispel’s decision to stress the decidedly unpleasant environs of the aforementioned backwoods clan exacerbated by a stagnant narrative devoted, essentially, to the running, screaming, and hiding of the surviving characters – which ensures, ultimately, that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre fizzles out to an almost astonishing degree. The end result is a hit-and-miss remake that admittedly could’ve been a whole lot worse, and yet, given the potential of the movie’s first act, it’s impossible not to wish that the entire production had been as comparatively stellar as that initial stretch.

** out of ****