THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.
by Jarrod Jones. This is Re/Play, where we take a fresh look at an older film, TV series, or video game to see if fond memories hold up under remastered scrutiny. This week: The Last House on the Left, available now in 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray editions from Arrow Video.
THE MOVIE: The Last House on the Left
ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE: March 13, 2009
NEW FORMAT: 4K Ultra HD (2160p/24hz) upgrade of the 2009 film’s 35mm print presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio in Dolby Vision/HDR (HDR10 compatible). The Blu-ray edition is an HD (1080p/24hz) remaster of the film’s Unrated version. Both feature uncompressed stereo audio and DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround. From Arrow Video.
RE/PLAYING: Dennis Iliadis’s remake of Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left comes at a time when horror is going through a burly phase. Digital cameras and cheap digital effects create a veritable boom town of grungy, low-budget features. Among a litany of gore movies, torture films, and found footage spook shows are glossy-stock remakes of classics such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (2003) and The Hills Have Eyes (2006). By the time Last House saunters into theaters in 2009, it’s sandwiched between slick re-dos of Friday the 13th (premiering one month prior) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (in 2010). Horror found a new groove, for better or worse, by replaying the hits.
The Last House on the Left, despite being an exploitation film rather than an outright horror movie, fits snugly in this new landscape. It’s vicious and bleak, as befits the times. Remaking Craven’s original film — he likens the experience to “having grandchildren” — is cheap but not 1972 cheap; Craven’s original film reportedly cost $90,000, a laughable sum compared to Iliadis’s $15 million production. Still, it’s low enough to ensure a modicum of profit and high enough to expand the story: assets brought in from the wisely-spent money include a medical technician, which makes the scene where Tony Goldwyn’s surgeon father attempts to stabilize his brutalized daughter (Sara Paxton) feel realistic, horrifying, and cathartic.
We should talk about the story. Craven based it on the Swedish ballad “Töres döttrar i Wänge,” where a husband and wife accidentally encounter the men who murdered their three daughters, and they use this twist of fate to dispatch the killers with swift, righteous justice. Ingmar Bergman used the material for The Virgin Spring, which puts him in strange company with The Last House on the Left. The pipeline from 12th-century Sweden to Wes Craven is a sordid game of cinematic telephone where the story becomes more horrific and less as the telling goes on. (The ballad dealt with the decapitation of its victims, while neither film in this peculiar club does, thankfully.)
Paxton plays Mari, an aspiring competitive swimmer who goes on vacation with her busy-busy parents (Goldwyn and Monica Potter) to their isolated lake house. She finds mementos of her deceased older brother, gets bummed, and takes the family SUV to the local market, where her pothead pal Paige (Martha MacIsaac) works the register. There, the two meet Justin (Spencer Treat Clark), a sullen type who just happens to be sitting on some grade-A weed back at his hotel. Paige hits the ‘closed’ sign, Mari hits the ignition, and they’re off on a minor adventure that soon becomes a full-on ordeal.
Despite his puppy dog eyes and soft voice, we know Justin is bad news because he’s keeping blood-stained money in his hoodie, and, thanks to some violent business in the film’s opening scene, we know where that money came from. We also know that that hotel isn’t just for him; it’s a hiding spot for his fugitive old man Krug (Garret Dillahunt), his psycho uncle Francis (Aaron Paul), and the equally bloodthirsty, perennially topless Sadie (Riki Lindhome). As established in that opener, Krug is not to be trifled with. When he comes back from wherever killers go in the daytime, we know Mari and Paige will have a rough time of it — though Justin and Mari share their mutual loss of a loved one (his mother died years ago), which suggests the slightest hint of redemptive empathy among this murderous clan.
The next twenty minutes, where Mari is brutalized in front of her dead friend, are the hardest to get through. Everything after that is typical of these revenge stories, where Goldwyn and Potter get to channel their inner vigilantes against this pack of sadists, par for the bloody course. Iliadis does make clever use of his actors; Goldwyn’s doctor character is seen early on doing no harm to a busted microwave oven and several glasses of wine. You don’t get the impression that he could be a brawler. Dillahunt, on the other hand, won’t be confused for anything but a monster. He imposes his frame in every scene he’s in. But both actors show concern for their children, and both do appalling things for their love — in Krug’s case, the lack of it. Watching these two connect, only to later go to war, is riveting because you don’t quite know how it might shake out.
“If bad people hurt someone you love, how far would you go to hurt them back?” the film’s posters asked. Given the Saw-infused revengers that blighted the rapidly waning video stores of the time, the answer is “all the way, obviously.” The shocks in this 2009 remake are grueling, messy, conventional stuff. While it boasts a few interesting visuals — in the rare instances when Iliadis employs color, signifying safety just to later steal it away, it really pops — it doesn’t have the same potency as Craven’s original. This competently assembled production is a far cry from the forbidding no-budget scuzz that made the ’72 Last House so unforgettable. When we arrive at its ludicrous, head-exploding finale, Iliadis’s grim revenge movie feels at odds with the crowd-pleasing splatterers of the day.
ACTUALLY SPECIAL FEATURES: As an Arrow Video rerelease, the supplemental material for this box set is reliably good and eminently collectible. On top of Arrow’s usual bells and whistles (a reversible cover sleeve with original promo art and original work by artist Eric Adrian Lee), this includes a booklet featuring new writing on the remake by Ghouls Magazine Editor-in-Chief Zoë Rose Smith and an exclusive introduction from director Dennis Iliadis. Chief among its behind-the-scenes docs is “The Notorious Krug,” a 27-minute interview with Garret Dillahunt, who rightfully positions the film as an “actioner” over a horror movie, shares an anecdote about his phone call with the original Krug, David Hess, and talks about how his rather complex goatee actually precedes Tony Stark’s.
RE/PLAY VALUE: This 4K transfer from Arrow is a weird one. While the enhanced viewing experience of The Last House on the Left highlights Iliadis’s deft contrast of Krug’s brutality with Mari’s innocence (compare the first artful shot of her swimming abilities to the last one), this is still filmed with the grainy handheld approach that makes so many of these mid-Aughties offerings headaches to watch, and the remaster only succeeds by making the havoc look cleaner. It’s also strange to think that this of all movies has been tapped for rerelease; while its general quality elevates it above similar remake dreck of the time, there are likely few who’d champion 2009’s The Last House on the Left as unjustly overlooked.
6.5 out of 10
The Last House on the Left is available in Arrow 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray editions now. For purchasing information, click this.
Directed by Dennis Iliadis.
Written by Adam Alleca and Carl Ellsworth.
Cinematography by Sharone Meir.
Starring Tony Goldwyn, Monica Potter, Garret Dillahunt, Aaron Paul, Spencer Treat Clark, Riki Lindhome, Martha MacIsaac, and Sara Paxton.
Produced by Wes Craven, Sean Cunningham, and Marianne Maddalena.
Includes the theatrical R-rated release and the unrated version. Both feature sequences of rape and inventive uses of kitchen appliances to varying degrees of severity.
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