The Last House on the Left | Movie Review

Last night (21AUG09) when I got to the video store, I wasn’t sure exactly what movie I wanted to watch. I knew I wanted a horror, of course. I love horror and scary movies. Since Megan was out of town and doesn’t always directly watch horror flicks with me (I say directly because sometimes she will, but she doesn’t always look at the TV screen when “watching”) I thought it was a good time to pick one up. Which I’m really not sure why that matters because I usually watch them when she’s in town too, in fact more often then when she not. I think watching scary movies always adds to the scariness when you’re alone though. Who knows who’s behind the couch? ya know, other than the cats.

I ended up choosing to rent ‘The Last House of the Left’, the 2009 remake of Wes Craven’s older 1972 version. Oddly enough when I got home and posted my tweet about what I was watching, someone else who follows me on Twitter was watching it too! @cope243 was only about 30 minutes behind me and he mentioned how different and “messed up” Wes Craven’s version was from this newer one.

I have to admit that I expecting much more of a “horror” film than what this movie turned out to be. Last House of the Left was much more like a suspense thriller with a good amount of blood. The film started out kind of in a standard way for a movie that takes place somewhat in the woods, with a dark opening scene revealing the killer, and then straight to a light happy scene of everyone who will be the attempted killees. A nice family goes on vacation to their wonderful, happy, lake house, only to find out that when the parents get separated from their daughter things start to spiral out of control and there’s a killer on the loose that can’t seem to be stopped. Wait, wait, are we talking about the same movie? I think I’ve heard this one before! Don’t get me wrong here, although this film has some attributes that resemble other horror films, Last House on the Left was still able to keep me on the edge on my seat most of the time. The suspenseful ness is huge during the whole thing.

You could really tell that the editors spent a lot of time working on color effects. The beginning reminded me a little of the color done in Susperia, by Dario Argento. The colors of red and blue were very vibrant and crisp giving you a comfortable feeling while still giving the impression something eerie is going on in the background. The water effects and timed framed rates were impressive even on this standard definition version DVD that I watched.

Last House held true to my theory about nudity in a movie. If you see it (or at least very close to it) within the first five minutes of the film, then there will be, without a doubt, even more later on. At one point the nudity was a little uncomfortable to watch because of its nature. Watch it and you’ll know what I mean. Even though the scene is long, at least it seemed to be, it drove home the idea that revenge is a must.

Not a ton of killing in this movie, but plenty enough to satisfy. Also not a lot of gun usage for killing, I like the more melee type weapons, they do more damage of course. Watching everyone go back and forth from the House to the guest house, to the boat house, and to the lake all worked out well with similar sets it wasn’t hard to remember where the charters were.

I did like the ending. I wont say much about it other than I wanted to see more….then I did! Everyone got what was coming to them, including the son of the main bad guy (for being a wuss), and the daughters pot smoking friend, getting her head slammed against the sink. See what happens when you do drugs kids?! Crazy killers will hunt you down and get you!
Last but not least make sure you watch the few deleted scene on the DVD. They’re not long but a couple of spoken lines and shots were nice to see where some smaller details came from. At least watch the first and last ones, they’re the best.

Here are just a few other notes I took down while watching:
• I thought it was very interesting and pulled off well that the story changes main characters, at first the daughter then the focus shifts to the daughter’s father.
• Ending scroll of “death” shots would have been better if they were more smooth and shaky
• At the beginning when the girl is swimming then looks at her watch, what the heck is smiling about?! Lol
• Why, WHY, did the mom take so long to mention to the father about the necklace in the kitchen? Say something NOW!
• RUN the waiting is killing me, GO GO GO!
• Who is going to kill the bad guy? Father or Son?
• Very cool ending deleted scene!