Platinum Dunes' Remake: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2003

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) is a slasher film and a remake of Tobe Hooper‘s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). It is the fifth film in the franchise. It was the feature directing debut of Marcus Nispel, was written by Scott Kosar, and was produced by Michael Bay and Mike Fleiss. It was also the first film from Bay’s company, Platinum Dunes. Jessica Biel leads a group of young people driving through rural Texas in 1973 who fall prey to Leatherface (Andrew Bryniarski) and his family. R. Lee Ermey plays the sadistic Sheriff Hoyt. Critics were largely hostile, but the film opened at No. 1 and grossed $107 million on a $9.5 million budget. That success helped start a wave of horror remakes through the 2000s and 2010s.

At a glance

Release date	October 17, 2003 (US)
Director	Marcus Nispel
Writer	Scott Kosar
Based on	The Texas Chain Saw Massacre by Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper
Starring	Jessica Biel, Jonathan Tucker, Erica Leerhsen, Mike Vogel, Eric Balfour, R. Lee Ermey
Runtime	98 minutes
Rating	R (US), for strong horror violence/gore, language and drug content
Budget	$9.5 million
Box office	$107.4 million
Franchise	The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: remake of the 1974 film; followed by the prequel The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

Plot summary

On August 18, 1973, Erin Hardesty (Jessica Biel), her boyfriend Kemper and their friends Morgan, Andy and Pepper are driving through Texas to a concert after buying marijuana in Mexico. They pick up a traumatized hitchhiker who rambles about “a bad man” and then shoots herself in their van. Looking for the police, they’re sent by Luda Mae, a gas-station owner, to meet Sheriff Hoyt at an old mill. A strange boy named Jedidiah tells them Hoyt is at home, drunk.

Erin and Kemper walk to a plantation house to call for help. There Kemper is struck down with a sledgehammer by Leatherface and dragged into the basement. One by one, the friends fall to Leatherface and to Hoyt, who turns out to be part of the same family. He forces Morgan to reenact the hitchhiker’s suicide with an unloaded gun. Erin escapes into a trailer, where two women drug her tea, and she discovers they have taken the hitchhiker’s baby.

Spoiler section: the ending

Erin wakes in the Hewitt house, surrounded by Leatherface, Luda Mae, Hoyt, Monty and Jedidiah. In the basement she mercy-kills Andy, who has been left hanging on a meat hook. She escapes with a wounded Morgan, helped by Jedidiah, who disagrees with his family. But Leatherface kills Morgan in a shack in the woods. In a slaughterhouse, Erin cuts off Leatherface’s right arm with a meat cleaver. She steals the baby back, runs Hoyt over repeatedly in his own car, and drives away as Leatherface slashes at the car. Two days later, two officers investigating the house are killed, and the case remains open.

Production and behind the scenes

Platinum Dunes, which Bay created to produce low-budget films, made a remake of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre its first project in late 2001. An early idea had Marilyn Burns narrating as an older Sally Hardesty. Hooper and Kim Henkel came aboard as co-producers. Nispel, hired in June 2002, first called a remake “blasphemy.” He changed his mind when Daniel Pearl, his longtime cinematographer and the original film’s director of photography, encouraged him because he wanted to bookend his career with Chainsaw films. Kosar, in his first professional screenwriting job, felt the new film shouldn’t try to compete with “one of the seminal works of the genre.” Early drafts had Erin nine months pregnant, but Bay had that removed.

The original choice for Leatherface was hospitalized on the first day and fired for lying about his physical abilities. Bryniarski, who had worked with Bay on Pearl Harbor and had asked for the role, took over. He ate brisket and white bread to reach nearly 300 pounds, did his own stunts, and wore a fat suit that brought him to 420. The 40-day shoot began in Austin in July 2002, in heat and humidity. Nispel deliberately avoided the original’s documentary style. Pearl said, “There’s no point in making the exact same film with the exact same look.” John Larroquette returned to narrate the opening, as he had in 1974. Steve Jablonsky composed the score.

Release and reception

New Line released the film on October 17, 2003, in 3,016 theaters. It took $10.6 million on its first day and $29.1 million over the weekend to open at No. 1, then grossed $80.6 million in North America and $107 million worldwide. That made it the highest-grossing film in the franchise, even adjusted for inflation.

Critics were harsh: 37% on Rotten Tomatoes (“an unnecessary remake that’s more gory and less scary than the original”) and 38 on Metacritic. CinemaScore audiences gave it a “B+,” however. Roger Ebert gave it zero stars, calling it “A contemptible film: Vile, ugly and brutal.” Manohla Dargis of the Los Angeles Times praised Pearl’s polished images but found it “callous rather than creepy.” Robert K. Elder of the Chicago Tribune gave it three stars out of four, calling it “an effectively scary slasher film,” and Empire said that “on its own terms, it plays well.”

Legacy and influence

The film’s financial success influenced a long run of horror remakes in the 2000s and 2010s, including House of Wax, The Omen, Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Poltergeist. Many of them were criticized as unnecessary. Platinum Dunes itself went on to remake other 20th-century horror films. The prequel The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning followed on October 6, 2006, set four years before the remake, with Bryniarski back as Leatherface. For the original, see The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974); for its own sequel, see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

Trivia

Unapix Entertainment had planned a fifth film, TX25, around 1998, but let its option expire by January 2002.
Bay suggested shooting in Texas, where he had filmed three times before; Nispel had preferred California.
Trailers used a cover of “Song to the Siren,” recorded for the trailer by Renee Firner of the band Moneypenny.
Stephen Hand wrote the novelization (2004).
In June 2025, Arrow Films announced a limited-edition 4K UHD Blu-ray for August 26, 2025.