Toolbox Murders

Why re-make Dennis Donnelly’s tawdry, misogynistic slasher movie after 25 years – even if it is tricked out with Hollywood folklore about the Black Dahlia murder, movie star decadence and black magic? True, Tobe (‘Texas Chain Saw Massacre’) Hooper’s gory, over-elaborated movie may help DIY enthusiasts discover new uses for their claw-hammers and Black & Decker workmates, but horror fans will wonder why Hooper bothered to dress up the cranium-drilling and skull-slicing with redundant mumbo-jumbo about a crumbling 1930s apartment building decorated with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

‘It’s not about what can get in,’ Rance Howard tells nervous new resident Nell (Angela Bettis), ‘it’s about what’s already here.’ But Nell’s obsessive probing of the building’s notorious history turns up nothing more exotic than a standard issue ‘mutilated maniac in a ski mask’. A supporting cast of oddballs, including a janitor who looks like rock legend Neil Young on a bad day, loiter in the lobby, corridors and partially renovated rooms, waiting to be dispatched one-by-one.