Media Scanners: "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

Media Scanners: "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"
A roundup of critic quotes on this week's new horror release.
By:horror
Updated: 10-17-2003

When new horror movies are released, Horror.com scours the media for reviews. This update will give you a brief snapshot of what some of the top film critics in America are saying about "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake.


"...the new "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" has no pretensions about sneaking up on you - it simply charges, motor humming and blades flying, carving the spot where masochism and entertainment meet." - Robert K. Elder, Chicago Tribune

"Updated version takes everything that was elemental, edgy and air-tight fresh about Tobe Hooper's 1974 "gore-ror" classic and makes them slicker and more bloated - and thus less scary. Why can't they leave well enough alone?" - Gene Seymour, Newsday

"[The Texas Chainsaw Massacre] delivers proportionately fewer thrills and no discernible suspense. It is, instead, a long march to the slaughterhouse that seems to take forever to get going and, once it does, goes nowhere that hasn't been visited before by more talented filmmakers." - Dave Kehr, The New York Times

"That it escaped the straight-to-video bin suggests that Hollywood's contempt for today's youth audience has reached a new level. How it rolled out with an R, instead of an NC-17, suggests the folks at the MPAA are asleep at the keyhole." - Glenn Lovell, San Jose Mercury News

"In the new version, elegance is gone, but the relentlessness has been amped to the max, as if part of a perverse experiment to prove that more could be less." - Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

"The trouble is, everything in the movie seems too orchestrated, too from the mouths of Hollywood suits, too calculated in order to sell." - Bob Longino, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"The original was a uniquely unsettling tale run through a filter of uncertainty and dread following the war in Vietnam, but this reinterpretation lacks such a meat hook to hang its story on. It is morally inconsequential, prefab horror for the current demographic of males ages 18 to 25, stripped of virtually all the subtext of the original - save the theme of Southern hospitality turned on its ear." - Gary Dowell, The Dallas Morning News

"That remaining high-intensity hit of post-Southern gothic horror should please most of the purists who have patiently weathered countless lame pretenders to the throne and bring the New Line release...a nice share of the season's trick-or-treating." - Michael Rechtshaffen, Hollywood Reporter

Latest User Comments:
this looks good
10-17-2003 by karen discuss