Five teens are travelling from Mexico to Dallas for a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert when the hitchhiker they pick up blows her brains out in their van. They then go to report it but encounter ‘the family’ on the way.

If you’re travelling to go and see Lynyrd Skynyrd rather than Lou Reed in the early 70’s, then you deserve everything that’s coming to you.

This is meant to be a remake of the original with loads of the original crew involved. But it does everything that the original didn’t. Does it work because of this? Let’s see.

Firstly, the cast of ‘teens’ feels more like models you’d find in a Gap commercial. Also, if this is the 70’s, then I’m Ed Gein. It feels inauthentic, sanitised, and completely unbelievable.

Also, whereas the original has a reputation for being really gory, it isn’t. It employs the brilliant device of cutting away and letting the audience fill in the gaps in their own imaginations. This remake was made when the torture p*rn of films like Saw was in vogue and so this film delivers along those lines. It reminds me of the truly awful remake of The Hills Have Eyes in that respect. I hate this kind of painful horror.

In fact, it feels like the remake has been made solely for the multiplex crowd. It doesn’t want to lose the audiences attention and so there’s jump scares where there shouldn’t be (like, erm, someone walking past an open door) and these just aren’t scary. There’s also no suspense or engagement which isn’t very good for a horror film. I watched this with complete detachment and, frankly, couldn’t wait for it to end.

The original TCM is a gruelling experience that I gleefully revisit. The remake is gruelling but in the worst way possible. I’d never watch it again.

1 out of 5 stars