Movie Review: The Last House on the Left (2009)

In theory, Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left is a pretty good candidate for a remake. While the movie is incredibly effective, it’s also unquestionably flawed, most notably with its goofy cop characters, who are of course completely absent here, not just as comic relief characters but as characters.

Yet I found this to be a pretty uninspired remake overall. It’s quite similar to the original, of course, with the villains being almost exactly the same, just substituting Justin (Spencer Treat Clark) for Junior, and I don’t think it’s ever stated that he’s experiencing heroin withdrawal when he’s acting all weird in the last act.

For the most part, this movie got the casting right. Garret Dillahunt and Aaron Paul are appropriately threatening as Krug and Francis, and I really enjoyed Tony Goldwyn as John Collingwood, Mari’s father.

It’s a well acted movie, and it does have some disturbing moments, though centred more on the brutality of the revenge, and less so on the random act that inspired it, I’d argue. I mean when *SPOILERS* someone gets their head exploded by a microwave, what am I supposed to be getting out of this?

It’s not really a bad movie, but it just didn’t do much for me, and I really disliked the ending. I don’t think it’s a misguided remake so much as it’s just kind of forgettable.

Rating: 4/10