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(the Coen Brothers pulled a similar stunt with Fargo, falsely claiming it was a true story).
Which just goes to show the power of movies. An Asian woman - dimwitted, one might suppose - went in search of the loot that "Buscemi hid", and died as a result of severe subjection to frost.
The remade TCM was surprisingly nasty for a Hollywood movie, which might not be saying much, and ultimately isn't when compared to the original.
The fact that it was made for a handful of coins, a dozen or so Yankee millions, most likely influenced how far the filmmakers were willing to go, and compared to other so-called Horror movies of late, they went convincingly far. The macabre suicide within the van, the sociopathic cop taunting some of the kids in a sadistic vein, the senseless and sudden deaths, plus the terrifyingly unstoppable Leatherface. But what didn't work easily undid the horrific achievements. The beginning of the movie, a greiny, B&W documentary-style descend into (man-made) Hell was irritatingly predictable once the sequence resumes at the end of the movie ("Oh no, Leatherface's still about - ensuring the prerequisite demands of a sequel!"). The twisted, perverse, inbred family was not a patch on the creepy, bloodsucking Grandpa of the original; I mean honestly, a fat woman isn't necessarily worthy of an entry to the annals of the greatest horror movie characters, now is it? If that were so, Shallow Hal would be the candidate here. And the beautiful lighting, with a very Se7en sequence showing Leatherface's collection of organs and whatnot, had me thinking that if he were to make a career change, his startlingly innovative decorating sense would probably make him one of the most feted figures in the fashion industry; while Biel's breats were the natural center in whatever sequence she was supposed to perform in. But the travesty here, is the needless humanization of Leatherface: "Oh look, he's just a poor (white) man's Michael Jackson, who was cruelly picked on at school, therefore it isn't so strange that he became a twisted, psychopathic serial killer!" The original worked so much better exactly because he was an inexplicable force of nature that defied any easy categorization.
And the scare sequences, no matter how well orchestrated they are, fail to live up to the genuinely unexpected scares of the original; in fact, I almost had two heart attacks last night, when the woman in the fridge jumped out and when Leatherface dispatched the wheelchair bound brother.
So, a shout out to the original, then. Long may it live. |
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