The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Dir: Marcus Nispel

Insufferable and vapid remake of the 1973 film which replaces anything of interest with generic, overcooked stalk-n-slash fodder. Teens in a van get stranded in a fairly nondescript location (they don't even try to make it look like Texas) and, one by one, they're hacked to bits by a lummox in a mask. The script here is one-dimensional and dismal. They even give Leatherface a lame back story in which he gets bullied at school for having a skin disease. Most shockingly of all, they unmask him (sacrilege!) and, uncannily, he's a deadringer for Stephen King! The whole film is so dull and unengaging that even the chase scenes feel like they're moving in slow motion. The set design is flat and unoriginal. The lighting makes everything feel washed out and gives the film a sterile atmosphere. The gore, whilst squishy and unpleasant, is needlessly cruel and this humourless mean streak running through everything feels more puerile than shocking. A perpetually braless Jessica Biel is the only thing at all appealing here. Everything else made me want just smash up the video case, take all the tape out and wear it on my face like a mask of celluloid. It'd be much better use of my time than actually watching the wretched thing.

Broken (2006)

Dir: Adam Mason

A woman (Nadja Brand) wakes up in a coffin, with a razor blade sewn into her intestines. Once it's removed, she finds herself chained up in a wood and kept prisoner by unnamed man who proceeds to torture her, physically and mentally, until she is, as the title suggests, broken. If 90+ minutes of women screaming and being abused sounds like your idea of fun then, for Christ's sake, don't encourage these sad tendencies by watching films like this, get yourself some help! Even ignoring the questionable subject matter (and the fact that it never actually leads to any substantial denouement), the film is bad bad bad. It's under-scripted (it plays like a 10 minute short dragged painfully into 99), it's over-directed, it's abysmally shot on graceless digital video, it's slow, it's repetitive, it's riddled with continuity errors, it displays no attention to detail and it's completely illogical (ie: how is Brand's make-up so immaculately applied after 40 days of being tortured in a forest?). This is horror made exclusively by and for mentally stunted sociopaths and represents the absolute nadir of the genre for the rest of us. Avoid at all costs. I'm serious.

Calvaire (The Ordeal) (2004)

Dir: Fabrice Du Welz

Listen? Do you hear that? That hollow, scratching sound? Fingernails on wood? Ah yes. You do, because here, folks, we are truly, desperately scraping the very bottom of the barrel. The plot of "Calvaire" involves a travelling cabaret singer whose van breaks down in the countryside during bad weather. He is obliged to accept the hospitality of a weirdo innkeeper named 'Paul Bartel' (a clumsy and perplexingly lateral reference) and next thing you know, he gets brained by a car battery, wakes up in a dress, tied to a chair and being given a curious new haircut. From thereon, we're forced to endure about an hour's worth of torture and the obligatory, obviously thwarted escape attempts. I don't know about you, but I'm way beyond bored of mindless sadism and people being tied to chairs now. This one offers nothing new. In fact, what little story there is becomes so pointless, incoherent and ridiculous that I wanted to throw a brick through my TV screen. How on Earth they expect the viewer, after sitting through such a slow, excruciating movie to somehow believe in such a clichéd, far-fetched primary-school level 'twist' ending is beyond me. Even a cameo from an unrecognisable Brigitte Lahaie doesn't save it. Who is funding this nonsense? MAKE IT STOP.