In 1972 Wes Craven made a movie with the tag line "just keep telling yourself it is just a movie" and that movie was The Last House on the Left. It was a remake of an Ingmar Bergman's Virgin Springs, without the religious undertones. Well, it has been over 30 years so it is time for a remake, never mind the 2005 movie Chaos. Wes Craven is back as a producer and the movie has a lame tag line "If bad people hurt someone you love, how far would you go to hurt them back?" The 1972 version was so brutal with violence that one would think the 2009 version would have to be even crazier, which would be hard to do and still make a point. Now, I never would have seen this movie if the trailer had not been amazing, but since it was, I saw it and so I want you all to see the trailer too.
First off, that song. Oh that cover. Haunting and beautiful and totally working with the images.
After watching this trailer, I had questions and it seems like the director knew all of my questions and answered a few of them in the opening minutes of the movie. The daughter, who in the trailer, is swimming with a bullet wound and seems to be able to hold her breath forever, is trying to be an Olympic swimmer. Case closed. The father, who utters the brilliant line "You are paralyzed from the neck down. I didn't have any rope or duct tape" is a doctor which answers my question of how did he know what to sever. Of course, the end of the trailer is obviously the final scene in the movie, which usually I hate because it makes a movie anti-climatic, but where that moment goes is so awesome, it actually made me excited that I knew a guy was having his head put in a microwave.
The Last House on the Left is an interesting slasher movie for many reasons, but mostly because we are actually rooting for the good guys. Typically we watch slasher flicks to watch Jason, Freddy or Michael kill people in interesting ways. This time we are cheering for a married couple picking off a larger group of bad guys. Also, the first 45 minutes really sets up just how bad these guys are. The rape scene of the daughter is truly brutal, not because it graphically shows things, but because the camera is so tight on the shot and all we see is the girl crying, clawing and we only hear the thrusting. It is nearly impossible to watch, but because they are so bad we find a sense of catharsis in this family exacting their revenge. And, make no mistake about it, these parents do whatever they need to do to get their revenge and the audience cheers when they do. It is weird to care about the good guys and it is weird to watch a slasher flick where we know everyone is actually human.
This is not Saw or Hostel, but there is a pretty large amount of gore. It is not torture porn though. In fact, by the time the parents start going after the bad guys the movie only has about 25 minutes left and it moves very quickly. The shaky camera stuff gets a bit too much, but that is becoming a staple of running through the Forrest scenes. The acting is quite good all the way around, which is rare for a movie like this. Even Monica Potter, typically awful, does a good job, especially in the scene where she is pretending to flirt with the guy who helped rape her daughter. Garrett Dilahunt, as the most crazy evil bad guy is so creepy, but it is not just a one note creepiness. He shows you layer 1 and then delves deeper into crazy and gives you new layers. There is a car crash in slow motion that gives you an idea of what a pinball goes through as the car hits one side against a tree, then another side into another tree before splitting head on with another tree. It is spectacular.
All of that being said, I had hopes for a little more conversation between the parents about the morality of it all. No one would blame the parents for wanting to kill the people who raped, beat and shot their daughter, but the transition is almost too fast for me. I wanted to see more of a gradual build up I guess or just a sentence of hesitation. Maybe the lack of conversation is the point. Maybe the moral black and grey area the movie operates in it is the point. We can never know our capacity for hate, murder and revenge until someone we love is taken from us, or nearly taken from us. if we lived in a creepy house in the woods and the power was out and we were sharing a house with the group of people who raped our daughters, would we not be inclined to murder? Would we not want to hear this evil man bed for his life? Wouldn't we want to put his head in a microwave?
Final Grade: B
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