The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

This slick and gory revisit to the landmark, low-budget 1974 splatter film propels us through the self-inflicted bullet hole in a young girl’s head, out the rear window of a van in which she is riding and into a rural Texas community populated by deranged, sweaty folks and a disfigured power-tool enthusiast know as Leatherface. Five friends on a road trip back from Mexico descend into a Lone Star killing field when they attempt to dispose of the aforementioned corpse and seek help from the local sheriff (Full Metal Jacket’s R. Lee Ermey), who reeks of contempt for these tight-jeans and bare-midriff intruders. Commercial and music-video veteran Marcus Nispel concentrates more on graphic spectacle than on suspense for graphic spectacle and slips in a wet-T-shirt Kodak moment as original Massacre narrator John Larroquette and cinematographer Daniel Pearl reunite in the gruesome slaughter.