Movie Review - 'The Last House on the Left'

The Last House on the Left Starring Tony Goldwyn, Monica Potter, Garret Dillahunt, and Sara Paxton Directed by Dennis Iliadis Rated R

Wes Craven is a familiar name to horror movie fans. A look at his films reveals some of the genre's legendary titles, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, The Hills Have Eyes. Point A on the Craven road map is The Last House on the Left, a graphic 1972 film that made a name for the director, on a $90,000 budget. The film is one of those early pillars of horrordom, and Craven has been very careful about how its remake would take shape. On the whole, the new Last House on the Left is a very effective film, if sometimes hard to watch.

Ultimately, you'll like a comedy if it makes you laugh and you'll like a horror movie if it keeps you on the edge of your seat or peering at the action through your fingers. And much more so than most of the recent horror remakes, The Last House on the Left meets that goal.

While vacationing with her parents in the middle of nowhwere, Mari (Sara Paxton) meets up with a friend and finds herself in a most unfortunate circumstance. She comes upon a recently escaped felon named Krug (Garret Dillahunt) who, along with his small gang, has killed two police officers. So now Mari and her friend are witnesses, and criminals hate witnesses. Krug takes the girls into the woods, and you don't have to have a vivid imagination to figure out what's next. But with a freshly dead vehicle, the criminals on the run won't get very far. The decide to hit the first house they find to lay low. And guess who's at home? That's right, it's Mary's parents. An already tense film gets especially palpable once John and Emma Collingwood (Tony Goldwyn and Monica Potter) open their door to the strangers. After all, we know that they're killers and we know what happened to the Collingwood's daughter, and the unsuspecting couple has no idea. In recent memory, perhaps only The Strangers from last summer can compare to its tension as a more adult- driven horror movie, one where the emphasis is less on bloodshed and more on character and situations. There is blood, plenty of it at the end, but it's a bloodless attack that is the most unsettling, and it could be argued that the attack in question is merely gratuitous. Beyond that one moment, however, it works for most of its 100 minutes. Greek director Dennis Iliadis has taken a pretty iconic genre movie, kept what works, changed what wouldn't, and made it a more contemporary version that doesn't owe that much to the original. It's a fresh take with more going for it than I expected going in. There's probably not a great performance here, but they all work well enough together to keep you invested in the story, which has very little mystery but quite a bit of suspense.
Watch the Last House on the Left trailer