(Spoiler alert.)
Oh look, yet another remake of a classic horror film, this time of an early Wes Craven. Well, get ready, because it won’t be the last. Word is out that “A Nightmare On Elm Street” is getting a make-over as well. Oh joy, oh rapture. Yes, that is sarcasm.
“The Last House On The Left” is about a husband, wife and their 17-year-old daughter, Mary, who go up to their vacation house at the mountain lake. After what is clearly a bad decision on Mary’s part, she and her friend are brutally raped/assaulted by a group of psychotic killers. Mary manages to get away by running to the lake and swimming, but gets shot and left for dead in the water. The group of crazies unwittingly stumble upon Mary’s parents’ house down the road as a storm sets in.
Mary shows up wounded, and her parents realize who is in their guest house. The parents take matters into their own hands and enact some fairly unpleasant revenge on the criminals.
Only about the first half of any of that is justifiably watchable. It starts with some good tension, and follows Wes Craven’s original 1972 film of the same name. But somewhere along the way it becomes just another revenge movie. It adds nothing new to the story, nothing new to the plot, we get zero background on the criminals, and it certainly has none of the message of the original that we are all becoming desensitized to violence. It’s just violent for violence’s sake.
The acting is perfectly fine. But the material is just not interesting or unique enough to warrant this remake of a classic horror film. And the original had some pretty borderline acting, if not comical. And really, isn’t that what you hope for sometimes? C’mon, admit it. You love a cheesy horror film mostly because it IS cheesy. This film isn’t cheesy. It’s grim and humorless and violent, all without much purpose.
This is just another remake to toss on the growing pile of unnecessary remakes that Hollywood is pushing at us these days. There’s nothing new here to justify it being made. I would hope it fails miserably in the box office so maybe these bad films stop getting made, but then again, I doubt that would stop the Hollywood remake machine. Tinseltown seems determined to avoid original material and simply rehash everything it’s made before, adding some quick flash cuts and a new foreboding soundtrack, thinking we’ll open wide as they try to shove it all down our throats. And here we are, choking.
The most creative thing about this movie is the cooking of a killer’s head in an old microwave until it explodes. There, you just saw the last scene of this movie. Gee, sorry I spoiled it for you. Oh, quit your puling. As if you were really going to see this anyway. Seriously, I just fucking saved you 10 or 12 dollars and two hours of your life. Now go read a book or take a walk in the park.
~ Neil T. Weakley, your average movie-goer, assuming this was the last script on the left – of the trash pile.
