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I watched the Unrated version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning last night, and while a perfectly solid modern horror film I felt it had a lot of the issues that the 2003 remake suffered from. For a start it was far too polished and edited in such a way that it wasn't able to really capture the atmosphere of the 1974 movie. And while I don't want or expect films to be a carbon copy of older movies, I look at the retro approach that directors such as Rob Zombie and Alexandre Aja go for and feel that is the best approach for remakes; having its own style but staying true to the look and feel of the time it was reflecting. And while there are far worse actors to carry a movie, I do think that once again R. Lee Ermey was far too overexposed leaving Leatherface to look like an afterthought. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed both this and the 2003 movie to a degree, but the slick look and feel just didn't fit with the film itself, so in that regard I feel both were missed opportunities.

And while I'm here I'll just say that I'm one of the few people who really liked Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. One of the very few people who quite enjoyed Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation and one of the handful of people who absolute hated Tobe Hooper's sequel to the original.