Last House on the Left [18]

The original Last House on the Left was not, in fact, an original. It took the essential plot structure and moral themes of Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring and retrofitted them with a late 70s style and newly popular heaps of gore. These themes were so clearly universal, or timeless even, that the updating seemed utterly sensible, essential and practical, a way to get the audience of the popular splat and stalk genre to attach to some big ideas that many other films of that ilk were avoiding. Can we still say the same for this new, re-remake when the updates alter the film in only a relatively minor way?

Here’s the set up of all of the films: the daughter of a fairly well off couple falls foul of travelling bad folk. She is defiled and left for dead, and then the perpetrators seek lodging. By coincidence, they come to the home of the parents and are given beds for the night. When the parents come to realise what has happened to their daughter, and who is responsible, they take bloody revenge. It’s a platform for ideas about class, about vengeance, about the bond between parents and children. Amazingly rich stuff though, to date, only the Bergman film has really tapped the basic concept to anything like its full potential. But the 70s Last House, as rough and raw and uneven as it was, even though its mood and manner swang wildly from scene to scene, was still an urgent, crucial addition to the slash-em-up subgenre. It came at a time when that movement was, perhaps, at its height and it caught the moment brilliantly.

In most respects, this latest film is rather polished. I could nitpick about several technical shortcomings here and there, but the overall feel is one of gloss. This is tied into the film’s status as a mainstream release on a large scale, something that was never true in the US or UK of either of the previous films. Being mainstream, of course, it also has some of its edges taken off – one character that most definitely did not survive the original storyline, and with good reason, is kept going here. Many of the changes are interesting, if muddled, however. This film isn’t without political or social relevance of its own, these key ideas just get tangled up in a relatively plain example of horror “product”.

When the little interesting bits do come by, they stick out and stick in, like little knives. For a horror connoisseur, they might be tasty enough morsels to get by on. For the casually interested, the film is likely to only offer moderate dividends. For those of you normally quite turned off by horror films… I advise you go find a DVD of The Virgin Spring instead.

Brendon Connelly (Unverified), 08/06/09

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