When I first heard that someone was going to remake The Toolbox Murders I thought to myself, ‘Here we go again, another half assed version of a classic that I am going to have to force myself to sit down and watch, just to say that I saw it!’. Then the ‘good news’ arrived, it was going to be none other then horror icon Tobe Hooper that was going to direct. I started to get excited, and for very valid reasons! I mean, this is the man that brought you the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre! The gent that directed Poltergeist! A director that had the balls to reinvent the characters that made him famous in the first place with the totally misunderstood masterpiece that is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2! I then asked myself, ‘How could this project go wrong?’. Well, after seeing the movie a few days ago, I still do not know how to answer that question.
The story revolves around a young couple who just moved into a near Hollywood apartment that seems to be undergoing some serious renovations. The apartment is inhabited with your typical cast of workers and tenants: a madcap apartment manager, an introverted creepy maintenance guy, a Hispanic doorman (for comic relief), a wise old man that has lived there the majority of his life, and the struggling actress who has shed plenty of weight due to Hollywood’s mean and vicious tendencies.
As people start getting killed off one by one, you start to think that this movie is your run of the mill, ‘who done it’ murder mystery. I can assure you that this is not what this film is. Instead we are treated to a twist in the story that I am sure confused not just me, but even the writers who wrote the film. We the viewers are treated to a mish mash of spells, curses, secret hiding places, and killers that are never explained in the least.
The kills are not very interesting, and not bloody in the least. This was the biggest surprise to me, because even the Mangler had some great gory deaths!
OVERALL SUMMARY
Ever since M. Night Shyamalan started a trend of clever surprise endings with the Sixth Sense, most Horror writers have tried to outdo themselves and come up with the mother of all twists. The majority of time, they do not work. I would like to challenge these writers and ask them to go back to the good old days, when a horror movie was allowed to be just that, a slasher film that can be lots of mindless fun. I for one miss those days
