Movie Reviews

This one was a bit difficult to come to terms with.

I've long realized that movies I've regarded as favourites of mine are often ones that have the ability to make me feel something; be it an emotion like happiness, or some other feeling like suspense or excitement. Some of the best movies I've seen have even left me feeling extremely sad.

Then along comes the 2003 remake of Tobe Hooper's "classic" slasher-film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre -- this one by no-name rookie director Marcus Nispel. And almost all the way through, I notice an ever-expanding feeling of what I can only really describe as 'disgust'. This is one seriously disgusting movie, and not in a "hilariously sick and twisted" way either. It's unabashedly vile, with not a single bright or light moment in it.

After watching it, quite aware of how gross it made me feel, I had to slightly re-evaluate my criteria for judging movies: if my biggest criteria for labelling a film as "great" is that it really makes me feel something, then technically The Texas Chainsaw Massacre should be topping my list of "best movies ever" for the incredibly effective way that it grossed me out. Yet, there's definitely no way I can say that such a vile piece of 'entertainment' is in any way even remotely good. After a few moments of reflection, I think I realized where a distinction should be made: emotions and feelings like happiness, sadness, fear, and even suspense, are natural, human experiences; vileness and disgust are not. They are uncomfortable feelings, from which nothing healthy or positive will ever emerge, and so why the heck would I ever want a movie to bring them out so strongly in me?

So that's my rationalization on why I hated this movie. I guess it's well-made and all -- the director seems fairly competent and all the actors did a good job at acting freaked out -- but to what end?