The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

"What you know about fear... doesn't even come close."

2003 1h 38m EN

😐

6.3

MID

🥫

37%

ROTTEN

😬

METACRITIC

⭐

6.2

IMDB

★6.3TMDB · 3,038🥫37%Rotten Tomatoes●38Metacritic★6.2IMDB · 158,409

Horror

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

After picking up a traumatized young hitchhiker, five friends find themselves stalked and hunted by a chainsaw-wielding killer and his family of equally psychopathic killers.

“What you know about fear... doesn't even come close.”

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Where to watch · US

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Cast

Jessica Biel
Erin Hardesty
Jonathan Tucker
Morgan
Andrew Bryniarski
Thomas Hewitt (Leatherface)
Erica Leerhsen
Pepper
Eric Balfour
Kemper
Mike Vogel
Andy
R. Lee Ermey
Sheriff Hoyt
David Dorfman
Jedidiah

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Marcus Nispel
Writers: Kim Henkel, Tobe Hooper, Scott Kosar
Languages: English
Countries: United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Grossed $107M — a 11.3× return. The kind of profit studios chase for a decade.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

ERA

Did you know

Released 23 years ago.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

CINEMA

Did you know

Part of the "Texas Chainsaw (Reboot) Collection" — so the characters or world continue elsewhere.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Marcus Nispel, shot by Daniel Pearl. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Steve Jablonsky. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Glen Scantlebury shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Jessica Biel and Jonathan Tucker and Andrew Bryniarski carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "What you know about fear... doesn't even come close.".

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Marcus Nispel directs. Daniel Pearl behind the camera. Steve Jablonsky scores. Glen Scantlebury cuts. Runs lean at under 100 minutes. Made its budget back several times over at the box office. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Grossed $107M — a 11.3× return. The kind of profit studios chase for a decade.
2Released 23 years ago.
3Part of the "Texas Chainsaw (Reboot) Collection" — so the characters or world continue elsewhere.
4Directed by Marcus Nispel, shot by Daniel Pearl. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
5Original score by Steve Jablonsky. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
6Editor Glen Scantlebury shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
7Jessica Biel and Jonathan Tucker and Andrew Bryniarski carry the top of the cast.
8Marketing tagline: "What you know about fear... doesn't even come close.".
9IMDB entry: tt0324216 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
10Classified under 22 themes, including "suicide", "sheriff", "psychopath", "trauma".
11Released under 14 different titles around the world.

The technical file

Cinematography: Daniel Pearl
Original score: Steve Jablonsky
Editing: Glen Scantlebury
Production design: Greg Blair
Costume design: Bobbie Mannix
Makeup / hair: Kelly Nelson
VFX supervisor: Nathan McGuinness
Sound: Scott Martin Gershin
Stunt coordinator: Anthony Cecere
Runtime: 98 min · 1h 38m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $9,500,000
Box office: $107,385,515
Return: 1130% of budget
Original language: EN
Certification (US): R
IMDB: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)
Rotten Tomatoes: 37% 🥫 Rotten
Metacritic: 38/100
IMDB rating: 6.2/10 · 158,409 votes
MPAA: R

Awards

4 wins & 17 nominations total

Part of

Texas Chainsaw (Reboot) Collection

Platinum Dunes' 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and its original 2006 prequel story.

Also by

Marcus Nispel

Stills · wallpapers

Selected frames

Full-resolution frames — open one to save it as a wallpaper.

Wallpaper

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

Community reviews

What people are saying

tmdb766221952023-09-30
★ 4/10
Producer Michael Bay steered this remake of the infamous 1970's horror flick, without bringing in anything new. When I first saw the trailer for this version of the story, I thought it looked a lot like a hurried sequel to the contemporary silly release "Wrong Turn." Five youths on their way to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert pick up a young hitchhiker who commits suicide in the back of their van. Looking for help, and a little common sense, they stumble upon a weird family and their chainsaw wielding offspring. Much violence and such ensues. While the first TCM was not perfect, I eventually learned to love the shaky camera, lousy sound, and cheap look. One reason that film worked for me was the fact that much of the horror took place in blinding daylight, the cast was hot and uncomfortable, and it showed. In this version, even with the original's director of photography, most of the shots are too calculated. The horrors in the dark are not all that horrifying. This might be the rantings of a jaded horror film fan, but I never got the same feeling of unease as I did in the first film. Much of the original's story has been changed as film makers tried to keep the audience guessing by not doing a shot by shot remake, like Gus Van Sant's "Psycho." The absolute lunacy of the first film's family was strange enough, here the members are more dimwitted than scary. This lessens the impact of Leatherface's scenes. You know he is the worst it can get, you don't have an equally sick family to fall back on. One disappointing scene involves the heroine Erin (Jessica Biel) running to a trailer and meeting two women who will obviously not help her. Instead of being a tense moment, where mind games involving drinking a seemingly harmless cup of tea could be played out, the women are there for nothing more than exposition, blaming Leatherface's penchant to kill on being teased when he was younger for a degenerative skin disease. The five victims all meld together, Nispel's direction is okay, but the cinematography is too nice for this type of horror film. The black and white scratchy scenes recall TV's "Millennium" or "The Blair Witch Project." If I would compare "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" to anything, it would be the terrible sequels that came out after the original "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" to that point. Just one was watchable, "Leatherface," but with the exception of Part 2, they were all simply remakes of the original film. Most direct to video sequels do that now, and while this film tries to be something different, it is simply a remake that cannot match the original. As Leatherface and the clan enter a new millennium, their wrinkles were showing.
Sierbahnn2026-04-30
★ 6/10
Clearly this is not as good as this can get, but with this particular iteration, this is what we got. It is nowhere near as frightening as the original, and a lot of that is probably due to the characters not being relatable, which is why you don't feel any tension, and without tension, the "scary" is just bland noise and screeching. If the characters had built a connection with the audience that might have been different, but that wasn't to be here. This is techically proficient, and looks good enough, but it isn't a horrormovie worthy a franchise like this. This is lower tier, for sure.