The year is 1973 and five teenagers are driving through Texas in a van, Erin and her boyfriend Kemper, plus Andy, Pepper and Morgan. They stop for a female hitchhiker but not long after she has joined them in the van, she pulls out a gun and blows her own brains out. They decide to drive to the next town in search of help and stop at the garage where the proprietor contacts the sheriff. He tells them to head to a spot on the outskirts of town. On arriving they are surprised to find only abandoned vehicles and a wild, feral young boy. Searching for further help Erin and Kemper stumble across a house which is occupied by an elderly paraplegic. Having been lured inside Kemper is attacked by a chainsaw weilding lunatic, Leatherface, who then drags him into the basement. Erin has been distracted by the man who answered the door and leaves still oblivious to her boyfriend's nasty fate. The sheriff arrives at the residence and removes the corpse, wrapping it in clingfilm before driving away. It is not long before Erin and Andy return, having now bwcome concerned about the whereabouts of Kemper. Andy is murdered but Erin gets away. Escaping into the woods she seeks sanctuary in a caravan which is home to two women and a very young baby which Erin decides must have been stolen from the hitchhiker who killed herself. She drinks some tea which she does not realise has been drugged and passes out. The sheriff returns and accuses Morgan and Pepper of killing the hitchhiker themselves, he arrests them and then takes them to the house where Leatherface is waiting for them. Erin, meanwhile is still unconscious and unable to help her friends and she is likely to be visited by Leatherface herself if she doesn't wake up and try to make her escape soon. Made in the style of a glossy pop promo, with attention to lighting and shot composure to the fore, this re-make of the rough and ready and mainly improvised Tobe Hooper original is definitely a gore fest in the scary/slasher movie mould. Leatherface finds himself disposing of beautifully lit victims as delightful sunbeams create lovely shadows among the trees, while the chainsaw goes to work, on everything but the trees. There is no time here for the suspense that gave the original its edge. No giggling wino half hidden in the long grass giving a strange portent of the macabre events to come, here we go straight to a girl blowing her head off in full view of the camera and all in delightful slo-mo detail, the camera even following the trajectory of the bullet till it makes its exit through her shattered skull. Nice. These kids seem altogether less innocent than those of thirty odd years ago, which is probably an accurate statement of todays' society, even though this is still set in the mid 1970s. Erin is particularly wised up, twice eluding her would-be killers, but overall they are still no match for a bunch of scary backwoods loons and a man in a mask with a chainsaw. But then it would hardly be a chainsaw massacre if they were, would it ?