The Last House on the Left (2009)

House of pain

I have to start this review with a cinematic history lesson – back in the days when old Shep was a pup, etc, Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left (1972) (produced by Friday the 13th (1980) director Sean S. Cunningham, whose film has also been recently remade) was far and away the biggest ‘gotta-see’ for a young horror hound such as I was and still am (apart from the young bit).

It was one of the most notorious titles on the UK’s ‘Video Nasties’ list during the early 1980s (one of the Conservative government’s better ideas, truly), which had come about because of 70s splatter movies from the US, Italy and elsewhere flooding into the burgeoning home video rental market. Prior to the Video Recordings Act of 1984, the onus was on the courts to prosecute a film if it was likely to “deprave or corrupt” the viewer. The self-appointed moral guardians of the time freaked, naturally, and the Director of Public Prosecutions drew up a list of videos that were liable for prosecution – in the end, 39 movies were cleared from the nation’s shops and successfully prosecuted, with The Last House on the Left among them.

As a result, seeking out the movies on ‘the list’ became the equivalent of a cinematic Holy Grail quest for me and my chums – for young people growing up in the beautiful Yorkshire countryside, we didn’t half make good use of it, sitting in the dark all day watching horror flicks.

Truth be told, as we were to discover, the nasties, with but a few notable exceptions, suffered somewhat from being crap. However (yes, we’re getting to the review now, keep your hair on), The Last House on the Left was one of our final discoveries, and it stood apart from most of its counterparts in that, although it was every bit as grisly as the hype led viewers to believe, it was made all the more morally objectionable by its being very well directed by Craven, which placed the viewer in an extremely uncomfortable position, as is the case with Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960) – how’s that for an invidious comparison?

Namely, given that the story concerns the brutal humiliation, rape and assault of two young girls, followed by barbaric revenge taken by the girls’ parents on the crime’s perpetrators, why would ‘civilized’ human beings even want to watch? This we do for fun, right?

Well, I’ll leave that to your own sensibilities, but there is no doubt that the remake by Dennis Iliadis (Hardcore (2004)) is more than respectful of the original’s driving urgency, gut-wrenching depravity and skillful audience manipulation. Young, beautiful swimmer Mari Collingwood (Sara Paxton) is taking a vacation in the woods with her mum Emma (Monica Potter) and dad John (Tony Goldwyn), who’s a doctor. The family are still coming to terms with the death of Mari’s brother Ben a year previously – Emma is very protective of her daughter, but she lets her take the car to meet up with her old friend Paige (Martha MacIsaac), who lives in town. The pair happens upon young Justin (Spencer Treat Clark), who persuades them to join him for some top-quality dope. Then, Krug (Garret Dillahunt), Morton (Michael Bowen), Sadie (Riki Lindhome) and Giles (Joshua Cox) arrive, and the horror begins…

The screenplay, by Adam Alleca and Carl Ellsworth, is based very closely on Wes Craven’s original, which in turn, amazingly enough, was inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s 1960 film The Virgin Spring – the performances across the board are excellent, and what separates this remake from the recent craze for so-called torture porn is exactly what separated Craven’s original from the other ‘nasties’.

That is to say, you may not like what the story has to say about man’s capacity for inhumanity, but there’s no doubt that the story has heart, and it’s in the right place. Whether you’ll want to share the experience, of course, is another matter entirely. Don’t know whether it’s likely to persuade you either way, but it is, I think, only fair to note that director Dennis Iliadis won the best achievement in direction award at this year’s BIFFF festival…

110 mins.
PS. If you would like to know more about the original ‘Video Nasties’ list, please click here. And, to check out the trailer for the 1972 original, here is where you go.