Lasting Impression

I've never seen Wes Craven's original, but I decided to check out this year's remake of his classic The Last House on the Left. It's a very simple and straight-forward plot: it's about two parents who unknowingly take in a group of criminals who has just savagely attacked their daughter and left her for dead. When they learn the truth, vengeance ensues.

I wasn't really expecting much, but the film really set itself up to disappoint, in a strange way. The thing is, for a while it was actually surprisingly good. For more than half of its run time, the movie is shockingly effective. We're forced to witness every moment of the horror these thugs inflict on the poor teenage daughter; it's brutal and very unsettling in how realistic the violence is.

Then the movie moves into the middle section, where the gang arrives at the house-in-the-forest of the poor girl's parents. Even though you know exactly where the movie is heading, it manages to generate a few decent moments of tension and suspense. And by this point, my expectations had been built up rather high because of how much better the movie was turning out to be than my preconceptions.

But then things move into the final act, the "vengeance" part of the story line. And that's when the movie basically throws it all away. The realism that made the first hour so tough to watch (in a good way, if that makes sense) is jettisoned in favor of the over-the-top violence characteristic of modern "torture porn" movies like Saw and Hostel. Every dime of the movie's budget is suddenly poured into ludicrous gore and breakaway furniture. Things go from tense and unsettling to silly and strained.

Soon, you're questioning the priorities of the protagonists. Not long after that, you're almost questioning their sanity; they end up committing murders as brutal as anything the actual criminals have done. (Were this reality, they'd be convicted of murder themselves; you couldn't possibly argue self-defense.)

There is some good acting in the film, including Tony Goldwyn and Monica Potter as the parents-turned-Rambos. A real standout is Garret Dillahunt, who probably isn't a recognizable name for most of you, but he really deserves to be -- he's a brilliant character actor that has done stellar work on the Terminator TV series (Cromartie/John Henry), Deadwood (Jack McCall/Francis Wolcott), and many more. He plays the main baddie, and might almost make the movie worth seeing despite how stupid it gets in the last half hour.

Almost. Really, I could only recommend this to someone who liked the Saw or Hostel movies. Maybe not even to them, as the pace would probably seem frustratingly slow to fans of those movies. I rate The Last House on the Left a C+.