Metacritic reviews

The film delivers with enough consistency to warrant a qualified recommendation for those seeking a few extra scares at this time of the year.

The gruesomely unnecessary remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is such a smorgasbord of slimy grunge that to call the movie gross wouldn't do it justice -- it's downright sticky.

A lot more violent and a tad less creepy than the 1974 original, the much-changed remake delivers enough gory, belligerent mayhem to keep horror fans screaming.

The new version has a few jolts, some occasionally effective smoke-and-mirrors photography and a lead (7th Heaven's Jessica Biel) who could teach a grad course on walking provocatively in blue jeans.

Director Marcus Nispel, a rock video vet making his feature debut, knows how to ratchet up the tension. His remake is a far, far better-looking thing than the original. There's also more humor, especially in the over-the-top performance of drill sergeant-turned-actor R. Lee Ermey as the loudest of the inbreds.

There's nothing wrong with remakes, but as this movie amply proves, there's often nothing right about them, either

Rather than exhilaration, this bilious film offers only entrapment and despair. It's about as much fun as sitting in on an autopsy.

I don't know if Nispel and Scott Kosar, who make their feature film debuts here, are the worst director and writer in the world, though they might well represent the United States if anyone holds a competition. I do know they deliver a total of zero laughs, scares or surprises in this remake of the infamously creepy 1974 picture.

Efforts to expand the envelope of grotesquery make the film repulsive and suspenseless, and it sorely misses original director Tobe Hooper's grisly, wily sense of humor.

Significantly more gruesome and noisy than its predecessor, and boasting more nasty-looking fluids than all the works of David Fincher combined, this version leaves few corpses unturned in its unstinting campaign to please gorehounds.