Critics are attempting to massacre the new version of
The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre. But most box-office analysts doubt that they'll succeed.
Indeed, many are predicting it will not only kill
Kill Bill, last week's
winner, but everything else at the megaplex this week. That hasn't stopped
reviewers from taking their best shots at the film.
Roger Ebert in the
Chicago
Sun-Times calls it "a contemptible film: Vile, ugly and brutal. There is
not a shred of a reason to see it." To Lou Lumenick in the
New York
Post, it's "a splatterfest remake that relentlessly assaults the senses
and mind with no discernible redeeming social value." Dave Kehr in the
New
York Times says that the movie is devoid of thrills and suspense and
amounts to "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." Ebert, by the way, remarks that "those who defend
it will have to dance through mental hoops of their own devising, defining its
meanness and despair as 'style' or 'vision' or 'a commentary on our world.'"
No such defense is included in any of today's reviews.
