The Collingwood family moves into the house near the lake for the summer holidays. Seventeen-year-old Mari asks her parents for the car to go to the city to visit her friend Page and spend the evening with her. Despite many recommendations, her parents accept. The two girls meet Justin in the supermarket where Page works, who invites them to the motel where he is staying with his relatives to use drugs. Page accepts and drags the reluctant Mari with her; but upon arriving at the location, the two girls find themselves prisoners of Krug and his family, a recently escaped killer who steals their car and kidnaps them. During the journey, however, Mari tries to escape and makes the car go off the road; then Krug, furious, decides to kill the two girls after raping Mari. With the car damaged and in the middle of a storm, Krug and his family then decide to ask for hospitality in the first house they find on their way, ignoring that the door they knocked on is precisely that of the Collingwood house.
There are some films that should remain unique, that do not need any kind of remake or restyling; these are films strongly anchored to an era, a social and cinematic current, that work especially in relation to the context in which they were produced. "The Last House on the Left", a small masterpiece of Wes Craven's debut, may appear, to the contemporary eye, as a raw, sparse, and uneven film but with an impact that is still unchanged today; we are talking about one of the pillars of postmodern horror, founder of a subgenre – rape & revenge – that broke rules and taboos and launched the director of "Nightmare" into the horror masters' olympus.
Thinking of remaking for new generations a film that speaks a strongly "seventies" language, that reflects on a generation – the flower children – in disarray, that cites the Manson Family and makes strong use of a staging that recalls war reports – that of Vietnam – without any scruples regarding sadism, explicit violence, and sexual humiliations is a battle lost from the start. "The Last House on the Left" is a unique and legendary film, for this reason, for the rest of the review, we will avoid comparing the two films for a more objective evaluation possible of Dennis Iliadis' film.
Let's start by saying that "The Last House on the Left" is a good film, but it has the flaw of functioning perfectly under certain aspects and poorly under others, creating a qualitative seesaw that gives it a bothersome sense of inhomogeneity.
Iliadis, the Greek director chosen by Craven himself after seeing his debut film "Hardcore" – a drama about child prostitution – has a sure hand and demonstrates excellent craftsmanship thanks to a style that alternates frantic moments with quieter, almost static ones, in a never banal way, finding a good compromise between modern and classic style. The choice to add scenes to the original story was sometimes a good one, managing to lengthen the film considerably (about 110 minutes, against the 82 of the prototype) in a functional way. No lengthy parts, only additions that give depth to some characters and clarify some passages without leaving too much to chance. Thus, Krug's escape is shown (it is precisely with this that the film opens), as if to create a greater aura of myth around the character, the Collingwood family has a past and an external dimension to the drama that is consumed in the film, the gang of criminals ends up near the lake for a specific reason, and so on. However, not everything hits the mark, and the addition of a dead brother in Mari's past serves little purpose other than to justify the pendant thanks to which the Collingwoods will begin to suspect, just as showing Mari as a swimming champion at the beginning of the film is a pretext that almost makes you smile for its obviousness knowing what her ability will be used for.
If, for better or worse, the screenplay by Adam Alleca and Carl Ellsworth ("Red Eye"; "Disturbia") is still willing to sketch out characters and situations, strangely the characterizations of the gang of criminals are neglected, who do not manage to go beyond the obvious labeling of "situation villains". Excluding Justin, Krug's teenage son, played by Spencer Treat Clark ("Gladiator"; "Unbreakable"), the rest of the gang is decidedly one-dimensional, a gang of villains whose only particularity is being a family. Even Krug, the leader played by a bland Garret Dillahunt ("No Country for Old Men"), is presented as uncharismatic and unconvincing as a multiple murderer. Probably the biggest problem lies in a questionable casting choice, acceptable in the "good" department but ineffective in the "bad" one; in practice, the right faces are missing, and only Riki Lindhome ("Pulse"; "My Best Friend's Girl") seems to have the right look for the role of Sadie.
We are talking about a medium-large production and consequently the film presents itself in an impeccable package. What surprises, considering that it is a film that is ultimately comforting and good-natured (discutable the choice to save some characters), is the brutality of some scenes and situations, sometimes accentuated by the extreme realism of the same, a characteristic that earned it the ban for minors in Italy. Undoubtedly, the rape of Mari and the death of Francis will be remembered, although at a certain point this realistic and disturbing verve inexplicably gives way to a final scene bordering on the ridiculous that risks, among other things, creating logical and narrative continuity problems: it would have been enough to end the film a couple of minutes earlier and leave in the drawer the unnecessary desire to emulate "Saw".
Overall, however, "The Last House on the Left" is a well-packaged film that entertains despite the unusual length and holds its own in the current cinematic landscape, always more hungry for violence. Probably, it will appeal especially to new generations, while those who grew up knowing – and loving – Craven's fundamental film, might glimpse, beyond the impeccable staging, only that underlying uselessness of a story that no longer belongs to our times.
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