Rote revenge

The Last House on the Left remake is
gorier but somehow less horrifying

BLOODY BORING: The Last House on the Left

by MATTHEW HAYS

It really couldn’t have been a shock to anyone that a remake of The Last House on the Left was on its way. Sequels are out and reboots are in, with the gore quotient overflowing in such retreads as Texas Chainsaw Massacre (one of the better ones) and Halloween (the worst).

It must be noted that while Wes Craven’s ’72 original is one of the grisliest horror movies of its time—or any time—that film was itself a remake. Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring (1960) had Max Von Sydow brutally slaughtering a few vagabonds after realizing they are the ones who raped and murdered his virgin daughter. This film became immediately famous for its lengthy, gratuitous rape scene, winning the best-foreign-film Oscar.

Craven’s ultra low-budget update featured wobbly camerawork and even wobblier acting—which, in typical raunchy horror style, made everything seem somehow more real, possible and harrowing. I lost sleep over this film. Its basic plot remains the same in 2009: two teen girls are kidnapped by a group of criminals, who torture and rape them. The girls are left for dead. Then the gang ends up staying with a couple nearby, unaware that this couple are the parents of one of the raped girls. Revenge ensues.

The strange thing about this movie is that while the gore factor has been pumped up, the dirty kink of Craven’s vision is gone. In his film, when one of the girls is repeatedly stabbed, one of the thugs reaches into her stomach and removes part of her intestine. She looks thoroughly horrified, and even he does, as though he’s just realizing the extent of his crime. Then during the revenge rampage, the mother convinces one of the crooks that she wants to go down on him, giving her the chance to chomp his dick off. Now that’s entertainment!

Neither of these oddities make their way into the new film, which is precisely the kind of predictable pabulum Michael Haneke was confronting us with in his brilliant Funny Games movies. Last House ’09 is generally a pretty dull film, with one exception: it features the most ludicrous kitchen-appliance-related conclusion ever captured on celluloid.

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT OPENS
THIS FRIDAY, MARCH 13