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The raw terror of the 1974 original isn’t replicated here, but director Marcus Nispel provides some great shocks in his gorgeous-looking update of Tobe Hooper’s horror classic. Here, once again, five young people fight for their lives against the deranged Hewitts and their disfigured son, Leatherface. With just a hint of cannibalism, a leering upgrade in sexual content and more gore than the relatively bloodless original, this refit still manages to retain a grungy, unsavoury atmosphere as Scott Kosar’s effective screenplay filters the now déjà-vu plot through seen-it-all slasher imagery and Blair Witch docu-realism. Nispel’s bigger-canvas bloodbath is most successful when veering from the Tobe Hooper blueprint, neatly playing with the gender of the victims in some of the key suspense scenes. Jessica Biel’s final panic-stricken stalking through a meat freezer might be formulaic, but suspense and clammy chills are still created by some dizzying slice-and-dice editing coupled with heaps of hardcore horror.
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