The Last House On The Left: they scrapped the test title The Last Crazy Wife With A Frying Pan (Watch Out)

Cast: Tony Goldwyn, Monica Potter, Garret Dillahunt, Sara Paxton
Director: Dennis Iliadis
Screenwriters: Adam Alleca, Carl Ellsworth

“You know, considering the rather notorious nature of the prison you’re heading to, I think I’d pray for something a little bit more substantial”. So says the assuming voice of a soon-to-be-dead cop to Krug, a no-holds-barred convict and eventual rapist when he asks his escort for a mayonnaise jar to urinate into. Considering the cultural and canonical importance that has been bestowed upon Wes Craven’s original The Last House on the Left, surely it was only fair to pray for a remake that was equally substantial.

Unfortunately, our prayers have not been answered. Horror, at its frightening best, is a genre that hovers on the brink of taboo: it should shock us, disturb us, trap us temporarily in a celluloid nightmare world where fear dominates all and terror is an addiction like no other drug. Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left, now standing as one of the heritage pieces of American horror films, did just that – its ability to haunt and linger in the mind like gun smoke was undeniable. Infuriatingly, it seems that Hollywood’s endless string of recent horror remakes (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Friday The 13th, The Hills Have Eyes, House of Wax, the list goes on and on…) refuse to learn from their mistakes, continuing to walk the rehash path with little of the creativity, verve or harrowing effect that defined their beloved predecessors.

Last House ’72, for all its brutality and relentless unease, was a horror with a conscience – Craven’s torturous thriller was a product of its time and place, a socially reflective shocker that commented on a time in American history when violent images ran through the heart of the media like a stick of rock. On the surface, this glossed-up rehash replicates Craven’s exploitationer in almost every way, borrowing plot, structure and even characters. The set-up should seem familiar: Two teenage girls are kidnapped and brutally assaulted by a gang of prison convicts, raping one of the innocent women and murdering the other in the woods. The story then hinges on one ironic coincidence: the house that the escaped cons choose to seek refuge in happens to be the vacation home of the parents whose daughter they raped and left for dead earlier that same day.

But beneath the narrative thrust and its desire to revel in some visceral nastiness, the two films couldn’t be more different. While Craven’s uncomfortable affair used striking imagery reminiscent of Vietnam atrocities to churn viewer’s stomachs, Last House ’09 is an altogether less ambitious beast – it looks slick and glossy where the politically charged original was raw and at times harrowingly real; it was edgy and dangerous where this is only ever safe and predictable. Craven may have made us sick, but it was a sickness derived from real world atrocities. It was, above all else, a film with something to say about the state of human ethics, albeit its message was disguised behind a mask of sheer brutality that many misinterpreted.

Still, this tightly plotted remake is not without its pleasures, and that’s the point. Director Dennis Iliadis infuses the grim antics with themes of survival about the lengths that human beings will go to fight for what is right. Good and evil become muddled in a bloody pit of hatred where the line between justice and revenge cannot be distinguished. The acting is also above average, with both Monica Potter and Tony Goldwyn giving credible, sympathetic turns as decent parents torn between their desire to save their sexually abused daughter and their intrinsic need to get revenge against those responsible.

Aside from that, there’s very little to recommend in a film that feels all too familiar. Iliadis is certainly competent at generating a tense and dangerous atmosphere, although even the most gruesome scenes lack the jagged edge that made the original so utterly shocking. Where Craven created an air of repulsive unpredictability, Iliadis adopts a rather cliché ‘no-one-can-hear-you-scream’ aesthetic for his final act, setting his scares against an unknowing family trapped in a strange home in the middle of nowhere – a dark, desolate milieu swamped by a hail of pouring rain and hidden beneath the shadows with no phone and little hope.

Of course, Last House ’72 was far from a perfect film, altogether lacking the refinement that Craven found during his later ventures into more mainstream horror with A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream. Sleazy in tone and sadistic in philosophy, Craven’s rough-and-ready shocker upset a fair few people in its day, and many continue to look upon its amateurish vibe with either disgust or outright laughter. Still, it was a film that paved the way for a new generation of suspense nasties long before John Carpenter and his ghostly Halloween stalker arrived on the scene. This Last House update, however, is far too handsome to disturb, and far too generic to leave a lasting impression. It seems no one was listening when we prayed for something more substantial.

Last House On The Left is out now on DVD and Blu-ray via Universal Home Entertainment

By Matt Freeman