THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (2009) Reviews of the slick yet still sick remake

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The Last House on the Left is a 2009 American horror film remake of the 1972 Wes Craven film of the same name, directed by Dennis Iliadis from a screenplay written by Adam Alleca (Cell) and Carl Ellsworth (Disturbia; Goosebumps).

The movie stars Garret Dillahunt, Riki Lindhome, Aaron Paul, Sara Paxton, Martha MacIsaac, Spencer Treat Clark, Monica Potter and Tony Goldwyn.
Plot:
The Collingwood family – father John (Tony Goldwyn), mother Emma (Monica Potter) and teenage daughter Mari (Sara Paxton) – are on vacation at their holiday home, a remote lakeside cottage in the woods.
car

Mari visits her friend Paige (Martha MacIsaac) in town where the two girls meet Justin (Spencer Treat Clark), a nervous young man who offers them marihuana. The three get high until Justin’s father Krug (Garret Dillahunt) and his two travelling companions – brother Francis (Aaron Paul) and deranged girlfriend Sadie (Riki Lindhome) – spoil the party.
In woodland adjacent to the Collingwood property, Paige and Mari suffer torments and indignities at the hands of Krug and his friends, culminating in carnal assault and murder. Afterwards, as a torrential rainstorm erupts, Krug and the others seek shelter at the Collingford residence. Unaware of what has befallen their daughter, John and Emma agree to let the visitors stay overnight…

Our review:
Before the 21st century mania for horror remakes took hold, surely the last thing anyone expected was for Wes Craven’s grim and upsetting The Last House on the Left (1972) to receive a major studio remount. If ever a film felt too grubby and nasty to make it in the multiplexes, this was it.

However, the success in the 1980s of A Nightmare on Elm Street and its sequels, and the Scream franchise in the 1990s, saw Craven’s Hollywood stock rise meteorically: his second horror film The Hills Have Eyes (1977) generated a successful remake in 2006 (which in turn begat a sequel in 2007), and the paradigm-shifting Nightmare on Elm Street was remade (less successfully) in 2010. All of this means that Craven’s bad reputation has long ago been redeemed by the only thing that really matters in Hollywood; money.

So what to make of this new adaptation? Essentially the film has been cleaned up and kitted out in the requisite fashionable clothing, given an ‘edgy’ indie horror vibe (big studio-style), and turned into a vengeance-is-good-for-the-soul post 9-11 rage-fest.

sara

Dennis Iliadis’s The Last House on the Left is moderately exciting, professionally constructed, but its thoroughly ordinary spirit is never complicated by the violence it depicts. The grunginess and verité naturalism of the original movie are nowhere to be found; ugliness is something you find in the souls of others, not in yourself.

Craven incorporated elements of satire in his depiction of a bourgeois American family, scoring scenes of Mari’s clueless parents with deliberately twee music. His abduction scenes were set to rollicking country bluegrass with lyrics making light of the victims’ predicament, leaving the freaked-out viewer to wonder just whose side the filmmakers were on. No such anxiety bedevils the viewer in the remake. The music is sensible, soberly orchestral, the limit of Iliadis’s eccentricity being to score horrific scenes with tasteful piano.


His version does at least make better sense of a major plot twist, in which the villains, having had their vicious way with Mari and her friend, wind up staying the night with Mari’s parents. Craven struggled to persuade us that the parents would welcome such a shifty quartet on the very day they’d reported their daughter missing; in the new film, the parents are still unaware of Mari’s fate when the killers arrive at their door, which works a lot better. Such improvements, however, remain at the level of carpentry; this gentrification of the rickety original hints at conservatism behind the tightened joints and fresh licks of paint.

The 1972 Last House on the Left featured terrifyingly plausible performances from David Hess, Fred Lincoln and Jeramie Rayne as the killers. The remake fails to meet this challenge, with performances seriously lacking in bite. There can be nothing more damning than to say, just four years after seeing this film, that I could not remember the actor playing Krug.

Riki Lindhome’s ‘Sadie’ lacks the wildcat Manson-girl vibe of her forebear, and the remodelled ‘Weasel’ (here just ’Francis’) comes across as bland instead of sleazy. Krug’s pathetic son, meanwhile, is transformed from a droopy whey-faced junkie into a sensitive slacker-dude who sweetens the last reel with an act of personal redemption.

As for the victims, there’s nothing to distinguish them either. Unlike Sandra Peabody in the original, whose Mari was so sweetly naive that it hurt to watch the extremes of cruelty inflicted upon her, Sara Paxton’s California-hardbody is so cool and composed that one’s anxiety is frankly diluted. Stressing her athleticism, the film seems on the brink of suggesting she can cope with anything.

father

The most profound makeover is reserved for Mari’s father. In the 1972 version, he’s a twittering fool, an ‘embarrassing dad’ from a soap opera; here he’s an imposing masculine presence who has no qualms at all about making the transition from family man to avenger.

In interviews, Wes Craven frequently claims that Last House was a reaction to the horror of the Vietnam War and the violence used by the State to suppress dissent. However much salt one takes with this pronouncement, Craven clearly set out to problematize violence – his film ends with Mari’s father, soaked with blood in the wreckage of his home, sickened by the extremity of his actions.

Iliadis (reflecting a very different US war experience?) goes to the other extreme, turning violent retribution into a punch-the-air affirmation of right and virility. The film ends on a triumphal ‘up’ note that owes little to Craven’s original conception and far more to such ‘bludgeon-the-criminal’ favourites as Death Wish.
Stephen Thrower, MOVIES and MANIA

Other reviews:

Monster Potter in The Last House on the Left 2009
Monica Potter

“People may bemoan it being more polished and more professional – Lliadis uses some wonderful long shots and his eye for colours is fantastic – but surely that is the point of a remake; taking something that wasn’t that great to start with and making it better. There are quite a few continuity and editing errors, and that ending is slightly dodgy, but this is one remake that updates its source material nicely whilst retaining the edge and threat of the original.” Ancient Slumber

“Some may bemoan it being more polished and slicker than the original, but that is the point of a remake; taking something that wasn’t that great to start with and making it better, and even though are a few continuity and editing errors, this is one remake that updates its source material nicely whilst retaining most of the edge and threat of the original.” Flickering Myth

“Sure there are some loopholes and genre conveniences like power outages and the perennial cell phones with no network coverage […] and a final scene which looked more like wanting to end it all with a bang, but overlook those areas, and you may enjoy a thriller where vengeful parents are given the cinematic license to wage war without remorse in the protection of their children.” (A Nutshell) Review

“Viewed from a detached perspective, it is well-made. The camera work is top notch and the movie never resorts to the quick cutting that has become the bane of too many thrillers. The actors do solid jobs. And the film is taut and arresting. There are serious credibility problems with the ending. In his zeal to give the audience too much, Illiadis goes over-the-top.” 2.5 out of 5, Reel Views

” …it’s never anything less than a well-crafted thriller which bolts through its 114 minutes with barely a hitch, other than a few gaps in logic and that whole microwave debate. If you are going to take this expedition into murky waters, then I would suggest thinking of it as The House Second from the Left. Judged without the added burden of presupposition; it is a surprisingly dignified and solid escapade.” 7/10, Rivers of Grue

“The acting is strong, especially Tony Goldwyn as the doctor father and Sara Paxton as Mari. So much is conveyed with a look or a sigh or a few words mumbled under someone’s breath. Faring less well are the bad guys led by Garret Dillahunt’s Krug, who acts sadistically but isn’t quite threatening enough, especially in the final 20 minutes. The script does right by the characters, but one or two stupid decisions are made by smart people…” San Francisco Chronicle

The Last House on the Left is a pretty successful updating of Craven’s classic. It’s not as uncomfortable to watch as the original and it feels a bit dragged out during the finale and its constant “look at me, I’m creeping around in the dark” scenes but director Dennis Iliadis does a good job of keeping things tense and even goes as far as staging a fight scene in a bathroom involving Krug’s topless girlfriend and a shower rod.” The Video Graveyard

“Is the new Last House a pimple on the ass of the original 1972 classic?  Hell no! Is it a better than average revenge flick? You betcha. For anyone who bitches incessantly about how Craven lost his balls on this one needs to follow this advice:  “Keep Repeating:  It’s Only a Remake… It’s Only a Remake… It’s Only a Remake.” The Video Vacuum

Emma Collingwood (MONICA POTTER) prepares to attack the cruel Francis (AARON PAUL) in the suspense thriller that explores how far two people will go to exact revenge on the sociopaths who harmed their child--"The Last House on the Left".

Cast and characters:
Garret Dillahunt … Krug
Michael Bowen … Morton
Josh Coxx … Giles
Riki Lindhome … Sadie
Aaron Paul … Francis
Sara Paxton … Mari
Monica Potter … Emma
Tony Goldwyn … John
Martha MacIsaac … Paige
Spencer Treat Clark … Justin
Usha Khan … Maid

Filming locations:
Helderberg Nature Preserve, Western Cape, South Africa

Technical details:
110 minutes | 114 minutes (unrated)
Aspect ratio: 1.85: 1
Audio: Dolby Digital | DTS | SDDS

Related:

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972) Reviews and overview

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