Another day, another remake. It seems like every couple of weeks there’s a new horror remake to review. I have to admit I was cringing at the thought of sitting through the remake of Wes Craven’s 1972 masterpiece The Last House On The Left. The trailer was one of the worst I’ve ever seen and after seeing the movie it’s even worse in hindsight. Almost every important plot point is revealed. It’s one of those trailers that makes watching the movie almost pointless. Not to mention the fucking pathetic cover of Sweet Child O’ Mine. It was laughable, and I doubt that was what the producers had in mind. The best part of that trailer is that I can now review the movie without worrying about spoilers. If you saw the trailer you already know exactly what is going to happen.

The remake follows the story of the original with a few twists and turns to keep things interesting. The Collingwood family goes to their vacation house by the lake a year after the loss of their son. Young Mari Collingwood (Sara Paxton) borrows her parent’s car and goes into the nearby town to visit her fast living pal Paige. Paige wants some weed, and the two girls wind up going back to the motel room of a kid named Justin. Big mistake. Justin (Spencer Treat Clark) is the son of a deranged escaped convict named Krug (Garret Dillahunt) and Krug is none too pleased when he comes back to the motel room and finds Justin and the girls playing makeover.

Krug, along with his son Justin, his brother Francis, and his best gal Sadie kidnap the two young girls and use the Collingwood’s car as a getaway vehicle. Mari tricks Krug into taking a wrong turn that brings her close to home and then uses the car’s cigarette lighter to cause an accident. The girls attempt to run away but Krug and company easily catch them. Paige is viciously stabbed to death, and Mari is brutally raped. Mari then escapes and attempts to swim to safety, but Krug puts a bullet in her and leaves her for dead in the lake.

A sudden (and very convenient) thunderstorm rises and the killers are forced to take refuge in the only house they can find – the Collingwoods’. Krug convinces the Collingwoods that his family was on vacation and had a car accident. John Collingwood (Tony Goldwyn) is a doctor, and he fixes Francis’s broken nose. The Collingwoods then put the gang up for the evening in their guest house. Moments later, a bloody and battered Mari manages to crawl her way back home.

John cauterizes her bullet wound and gives her an emergency tracheotomy. He’s then appalled to discover that his daughter had obviously been raped. Soon afterwards, Emma Collingwood finds Mari’s prized necklace where Justin had left it for her to discover. The stunned parents then realize that the strange people they had helped were the same people that had tried to kill their daughter.With no telephones and no car at their disposal, the Collingwoods are then forced to take the law into their own hands in order to stay alive.

I had mixed emotions about this flick. I’ll start by saying that this remake was much better than I thought it would be. That’s actually not much of a compliment, because I thought it looked like complete shit. I thought the acting was really good. Garret Dillahunt is no David Hess, but he does his best and does a good job carrying the film as the lead villain. Tony Goldwyn was also excellent as John Collingwood. The scene where he discovers that his daughter had been raped was effectively gut wrenching. He didn’t go overboard with hysterics, he sold the misery with his eyes and facial expression. I have to say this remake did a much better job of realistically presenting the character as a doctor than the original did.

The new versions of Sadie and Weasel (now named Francis) were pretty much throw aways. They didn’t do much, and they didn’t add a lot to the film. I thought the actress who played Sadie was really sexy, I just wish she did more than occasionally take her shirt off. Francis was pretty much body count fodder, but he got a few kicks in here and there. The new version of Junior (now named Justin) was more realistic as a kid than before (the original Junior was way too old to be Krug’s son) and did a decent job being sympathetic. He’s not a conspiring junkie this time around, just a confused kid who accidentally lures the girls to their demise. Sara Paxton did a good job as Mari with what little she had to work with. There wasn’t nearly as much characterization in this remake as there was in the original.

The big problem I had with this flick was the ending. I was enjoying the film until the end, and then it all fell apart in a big way. There were three moments that killed this movie for me. First of all, Mari survives this time around. I thought her character being alive made the parent’s thirst for murderous revenge a lot less believable. Second, there was another character who survived that really shouldn’t have. I won’t say who it is (it was one of the only plot points not spelled out in the trailer), but I will say that it was a pathetic attempt to keep the audience happy. Finally, and most importantly is the end of the movie. There’s a fucking retarded death scene that is nothing more than a cheap way to try to make the audience applaud. This splattery death scene is so damn stupid, illogical, and out of place that it completely ruined the movie for me.

The reason the original Last House was so damn effective was because it didn’t try to make the audience happy. It was an honest attempt to bring the media’s love of violence into the American home documentary style and then smack the dumbfounded viewer in the face with it. You weren’t supposed to cheer when John Collingwood took a chainsaw to Krug. It was the final desperate act of a man pushed over the edge by the death of his loved one. It was also a final attempt to shock and horrify the audience. The death of Krug in this remake is nothing more than a fucking punchline, and a really lame one at that. Director Dennis Iliadis did a fine job helming an effective thriller, but where are the guts? What is the point of presenting this sort of brutality and then trying to make the audience leave the theater feeling happy? You can’t have it both ways.

That’s why I think this remake was ultimately a failure. It’s too bad really, because the first two thirds of the film were effective. It feels like a lot of potential was wasted with this one. If this flick had the balls not to hold the audiences hand at the end it could have been a modern classic. As it is, it’s just another forgettable remake that can’t hold a candle to the original.

KEEP THE BLOOD FLOWING!!!