I’m of two minds about this movie from the start because I’m of two minds about every Chainsaw movie, even the original. On the one hand, yes – it’s absolutely terrible in many, many ways. On the other hand: it’s absolutely f*cking insane ... so you gotta hand it to ‘em. It has a couple of genuine scares and it has two now A-list stars (Matthew McConnoughey and Renee Zellweger, who I remember made some desperate bid to ban the release of this embarrassment when they were picking up fame) making absolute fools of themselves – Zellweger as a typical John Hughes-style high-school geek girl, McConnoughey as, well, a crazy guy. Okay, actually I have to admit that McConnoughey is pretty cool in this movie. The scene where he breaks the dude’s neck, “Well … now he’s dead … ” – that’s typical Chain Saw stuff, the closest this movie comes to the original.

This isn’t as good as the recent Michael Bay-produced remake, nor as good as the original. It’s like a middle ground. While it lacks the slickness and the benefits that crafty modern editing and effects can bring to the horror genre, it holds onto something from the original that is definitely missing from the remake (boy, if it were there, the remake would be a masterpiece). That thing is the insanity. I cannot stress how deliriously insane this movie is, and I guess it’s the reason I felt the need to see it again despite how terrible it really is. It’s just… insane.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 13th, 2004 at 8:11 pm in Movie Reviews, unrated. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.