The Last House on the Left

“We’ve got to be willing to do ANYTHING”

The story is virtually identical, so anyone who’s seen Craven’s original The Last House on the Left pretty much knows what’s going to happen in the remake. For anyone who’s not seen it: it’s more of a “terror” film than a horror film, with the bulk of the gore predicated on revenge.

That said, at least the terror shown in the 1972 version is tainted a bit by being severely dated…this film, obviously, didn’t suffer from that. The torture and rape of Mari Collingwood seems so real, so devastating, that even *I* was traumatized. And that’s saying a lot.

All this traumatizing works well later on, when the Collingwoods realize their houseguests are the ones who’ve left their daughter for dead. While this version makes a point (at first) of the violence being strictly a means of survival, it does definitely reach a state of pure revenge.

The audience, dead silent during the scene in the woods where the criminals have their ‘party’ were shouting “hell yeah” and “get ‘em” while the parents went to town with knives, hammers and wine bottles on the perpetrators. Usually I would not embrace this kind of reaction, but I have to be honest: I was glad to experience it in this instance. As far as I’m concerned, any activity that pulled me out of the realism of the previous scenes and into fantasy land was welcome.

This one is definitely not for the faint of heart – and it has almost nothing to do with the gore involved.