The Last House On The Left (2009)

 I just got back from watching The Last House On The Left (2009), and I couldn’t wait to write up a review for it. I’m not always like this. Sometimes I will wait for a while to write a review. Either to gather my thoughts about it first, or I have done enough writing for one day. Even though I wrote a review today, over on my own blog, I was more than ready to write this review once the credits started to roll by. The original The Last House On The Left was made back in 1972. It was writen and directed by Wes Craven. When I started to really get into horror movies, this film is one that I kept hearing about from different people. I went out and found the film, and watched it. The Last House On The Left has a love/hate relationship with me. I liked the film, but the situations presented in the film made it a very hard movie to watch. Because of that, I have trouble recomending the film to others. When I decided to catch this remake, to say I was apprehensive is putting it lightly.

The Last House On The Left starts with us meeting Krug (Garret Dillahunt). I didn’t realize it right away, but he is being transported by a couple of police officers. While stopped for a train, a truck rams the car in the driver’s door. We meet Sadie (Riki Lindhome) and Giles (Joshua Cox), Krug’s partners in crime. From there we meet Mari (Sara Paxton). We discover that she is a competitive swimmer, since she asks for her time as soon as she gets out of the water, something I have done more than I care to admit to. We also meet her parents, Emma (Monica Potter) and John (Tony Goldwyn). They are all heading to their vacation home on a lake. There feels like there is a little distance between everyone, which is explained by their loss of a son/brother. Mari decides, once she unpacks, that she wants to head into town to meet up with an old friend, Paige (Martha MacIsaac). Emma isn’t so sure about this, but John throws her the keys anyhow. At the store that Paige works at, Justin (Spencer Treat Clark) overhears Paige talking about scoring some pot. He offers to help, which eventually leads to the two girls being kidnapped by Krug and crew. When Krug decides to try and take the backroads, since the police are on the lookout for them, Mari tries to lead them close to where her parents are, and then tries to escape. This fails of course, and some very bad things happen to the two girls. After the girls are “dealt” with, Krug and crew end up at the very house Mari was trying to get to. What will her parents do when they figure out what happened to Mari, and the very people responsible are right there?

I have been reading a few of the reviews that can be found online. Most are by people doing the review for newspapers. Many say that they liked the original film, but none of them have much good to say about this remake. Instead we get things like:

“This Last House will, most likely, attract no especial outrage and have no subsequent obligation to justify its gunky, atavistic subject matter, untouched by the light of higher reason. It may qualify as progress that primordial slog only needs to be ‘about’ the ambiguous squirm that comes from sitting out an excruciatingly staged despoilment, the queasy pleasure reflex that kicks in when watching retribution in action.” (Nick Pinkerton, The Village Voice)

“Where the original juxtaposed graphic violence with tender moments of understated complexity and quirky humour, this virtually brainless and exclusively mean-spirited remake neglects every element that made the original succeed….” (Neil Karassik, Eyeweekly.com)

“It’s difficult to take the new ‘Last House On The Left’ seriously, although the material demands it. This is a spectacularly grisly feature that hopes to trump the Craven picture in every possible way, assuming a brutal attitude that delights in torture, revenge, and ogling the soft parts of the young female performers.” “The ‘Last House’ remake is all about pure sleaze, as Iliadis misses the basic concept of Mari’s ghastly misfortune by weaving in lustful close-ups of her barely clothed body throughout the opening of the film. Perhaps a comment on the innate depravity of the audience itself? I wouldn’t give this monkey business that sort of intellectual credit.” (Brian Orndorf, Ohmynews.com)

So, you are probably wondering what I think about this film after reading all of that. First off, I will say that the remake is a bit different from the original, as it should be. The plot remains the same, obviously, but the violence from the second act (against the two girls) has been toned down a lot. The third act (parents meet the bad guys) is where the emphasis has been shifted. I liked this shift. It gave us a chance to understand the parents a little more than we did in the original film. I felt like Emma didn’t want to kill, but was willing to do so when it came to her family, with the same for John for that matter. In the original film, the parents learn what happened to their daughter, and go into a rage. In the remake, the rage is still obvious, but I didn’t feel they were getting revenge for revenge’s sake. Even though the second act has been toned down, it was still hard to watch. Since Mari is a competitive swimmer, I could easily put myself in her shoes. As some have said, since the violence against the girls is toned down, it makes the rape scene all the more powerful. There is a large debate on IMDb if this scene should have been included or not. Some feel it is needed so that the parents are more justified in their actions. I don’t really feel that way. Rape happens, we all know this to be true. In the context of this story, it should be there. I’m not saying I wanted to see Mari raped, I’m just saying it shouldn’t be shied away from. People are very bothered by the rape, but never bring up the fact that they watched someone being stabbed to death. That is kind of the American way though, shy away from sex and nudity, but violence is fine.

The acting was great. From interviews with Sara Paxton, it sounds like she put a lot of effort and thought behind her role. She does a wonderful job with it. Her character goes through a lot, but never gives up. I liked that in her. Monica Potter and Tony Goldwyn are the true power to be found here though. I wasn’t too sure about them when the film started. That is why I liked the emphasis being on the third act. I can’t tell you how impressed I was with their acting during this part of the film. Tony’s acting, when he discovers what was done to his daughter, felt spot on and very real. The effects are also done well. Nothing too over the top, outside of the very last effect perhaps. There are some pretty gory scenes, but I won’t get into much detail over them.

As for the quotes above, I don’t get it. While Nick Pinkerton doesn’t seem to care for the original either, I don’t agree with what he had to say in his review. I don’t get how you can call the remake “mean spirited,” when the violence is less than it was in the original film. And I have to wonder how long it has been since the last reviewer quoted above watched the original film. I sure didn’t feel that Dennis Iliadis, the director, was trying to trump Craven at all. The remake is no more brutal than the original is, less so perhaps. I think he forgets that there is a lot more torture to be found, and a whole lot more nudity, in the original film. What I found funny about his comments, when talking about Sara Paxton, is that she is never nude in the film. She comes very close in some scenes, but she is never nude. In the original film, we first meet Mari while she is taking a shower, with more shots of her nude breasts than of her face, before we ever find out who she is. If “weaving in lustful close-ups of her barely clothed body” is considered “sleazy,” what do you call a completely nude Mari in the first film?

In the end, I will leave it up to all of you if you want to go catch The Last House On The Left. It is still a hard to watch film, even toned down as it is. Because of the subject matter, it should be up to you if you want to watch it or not. Even though I liked it a lot, as a film, I know it isn’t one I will watch over and over again. Some argue against the fact that the violence was toned down, but I was glad of that in this case. What makes this film so hard to watch, and others like it, is that it can happen easily enough. I can’t see myself in a situation like in Saw or Hostel, so the violence/gore in those films don’t bother me as much. Some people feel that this remake was geared towards people that liked those two films. I guess they forgot about the insides being pulled out of one girl in the original film.

4 out of 5 Would gladly watch again for the acting alone