The Last House on the Left

The Last House on the Left, a 1972 film by Wes Craven, is a seminal film in the modern horror genre. I've never seen it, but by all accounts it was extremely gorey (and based on an Ingmar Bergman film). Years later, Craven decided it would be fun to remake it, but with a different director, Dennis Iliadis. It isn't half bad.

Granted, the conclusion is ridiculous, with people surviving wounds that would fell a grizzly. But the middle section, which features two teenage girls being terrorized by a gang of criminals, is pretty fucking intense.

Garrett Dillahunt is a crook who escapes while being transported to prison. His brother and girlfriend, along with his meek teenage son, hole up in a motel. Meanwhile, a perfect family with a doctor father (Tony Goldwyn) teacher mom (Monica Potter) and swim champion daughter (Sara Paxton) take residence in their summer lake house. Paxton is friends with a local girl (Martha McIsaac) who likes to smoke dope. When Dillahunt's son (Spencer Treat Clark) lures the girls back to the motel for some fine pot, they are interrupted by Dillahunt and the crew. That's when things get intense.

The ensuing scenes are not for the meek. They are not explicit, but the menace exhibited by Dillahunt is effective. He ends up raping Paxton, who does a nice job of showing the fear and shame of that experience.

They leave the girls for dead, and after their car crashes the crooks take refuge with--you guessed it--Paxton's parents. Once the parents find out who they are the film degenerates into a bloody free-for-all. They decided not to include a biting off of a penis, as in the original, but there is a pick-axe to the brain, a hand shoved in a garbage disposal, and a head cooked in a microwave.

What good will I had for the film kind of dissipated there, as things were just way too over the top. We have characters able to swim across a lake with a bullet in their back, and someone surviving a knife to the heart and a poker into the thorax. It goes from scary to silly.

The film does look good. Iliadis shows a flair for pacing and general creepiness. I do find it interesting, though, that the film basically says that not only is marijuana a gateway drug, but it also leads to rape and murder.