Saturday, April 27, 2024

The Last House on the Left at 50: Wes Cravens shock horror retains its power Wes Craven

house of the left

The Last House on the Left was theatrically released in the United States on March 13, 2009, and was a modest box office success, grossing $46 million against its $15 million budget. The film received mixed reviews from critics, with several deeming it worthy of praise in comparison to other horror films and remakes in general, while others considered it inferior to the original. The rights to The Last House on the Left were picked up by Rogue Pictures in 2006, with the remake being the first film produced by Craven's newly formed studio Midnight Pictures. Craven, who wrote and directed the original film, was interested to see what kind of film could be made on a larger budget, as the limited funds forced him to remove scenes he had wanted to film to tell a complete story.

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I am uninterested in being "consistent." I approach the new film as simply a filmgoer. Other scenes, while violent, fell within the range of contemporary horror films, which strive to invent new ways to kill people, so the horror fans in the audience will get a laugh. The original script by Alleca included elements of supernatural horror, which prompted the studio to reject it and bring in Ellsworth for rewrites. Principal photography began in March 2008 in Cape Town and Helderberg Nature Reserve and concluded in May.

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John and Justin break in and Sadie beats them with a shower curtain rod, almost knocking them out until Emma shoots Sadie through her left eye, killing her. Krug hides, and attacks John and Justin when they search for him. Justin is stabbed by Krug, but with a combined effort from Emma and John, Krug is knocked unconscious. John, Emma, Mari, and Justin then leave in the boat for the hospital.

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Once they get to the city, however, Phyllis tries to procure a little “grass” from a young junkie on a stoop and she and Mari are led straight to the lion’s den. Before they know it, they’re trapped in a room with a gang of recent prison escapees, led by Krug (David A Hess), a rapist and serial killer. Later, John returns to the cabin, where he has paralyzed Krug from the neck down.

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When going after Krug and Sadie, who are in bed, they find Justin holding Krug's gun; Justin gives the gun to John so that he can kill Krug. Sadie awakens and John shoots and wounds her in the neck, allowing Krug to escape through the window and into their house. Finding Francis dead, Krug realizes that they are Mari's parents.

And Sara Paxton, who has been acting since 8 and was 20 when the movie was made, shows, as so many sexy young blonds do, that they are better than the bubblehead roles they are mostly given. From there, The Last House on the Left gazes blankly as the two young women are bound and gagged, driven out to the woods and subjected to abhorrent acts of violence and sexual abuse. Their struggle for survival is made all the more unnerving by the fact that the woods are right outside Mari’s home and the Keystone Cops her parents have summoned to search for her can do nothing about it. This sets the stage for the “revenge” part of the rape-revenge scenario, when the gang, having bloodily dispatched the two women, hole up at a nearby home they’re late to realize is Mari’s. What follows is another messy fight to the death, this time between the grieving parents and their vile guests.

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These films are in the horror genre, which once tried to scare the audience, but now invites the audience to share the fear and pain of the characters. It is the one genre that can lead the box office without name stars, perhaps because its fans know that big stars very rarely appear in one (I'm not thinking of films where story is first, but those in which graphic violence is first). The Last House on the Left is a 2009 revenge horror thriller film directed by Dennis Iliadis and written by Adam Alleca and Carl Ellsworth. A remake of the 1972 film of the same name, it stars Tony Goldwyn, Monica Potter, Garret Dillahunt, Aaron Paul, Spencer Treat Clark, Riki Lindhome, Martha MacIsaac, and Sara Paxton. The film follows Mari Collingwood, a teenager who is abducted, raped, and left for dead by a family of violent fugitives.

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Over the years, The Last House on the Left has gained a reputation that’s as queasily polarized as its own swings between savage violence and slapstick comedy. On the one hand, it’s a high-minded debasement of Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, as much a throbbing counterculture hangover as the Rolling Stones’ Altamont documentary Gimme Shelter was two years before. It took that long for the film to not be understood as a mere obscenity, without redeeming value. In August 2006, Rogue Pictures finalized a deal to remake The Last House on the Left (1972) with original writer and director Wes Craven as a producer. In 1972, he did not have the budget to film every piece of the story he wanted to tell. They're surprisingly good, and I especially admired the work of Monica Potter and Tony Goldwyn as the parents of one of two girls who go walking in the woods.

The Last House on the Left at 50: Wes Craven’s shock horror retains its power

Craven has said that The Last House on the Left was inspired, in part, by the explicit footage that was piped into news segments on Vietnam war, but wasn’t reflected by the horror and action films being produced at the time. The country was willing to send its young people off to war, but it couldn’t confront the same violence and death in a theater. It’s hard to define the film’s political point of view, other than a prevailing feeling that wars were being fought at home, too, and that the idealism of the love generation had curdled into bad vibes. It may not be a film about America or Vietnam per se, but it’s an essential mood ring of the early 70s.

When her parents learn what was done to her, they seek vengeance against the family, who have taken shelter at their summer home during a thunderstorm. It is also true that director and Dennis Iliadis and his cinematographer Sharone Meir do a smooth job of handling space and time to create suspense. The film is an effective representative of its genre, and horror fans will like it, I think, but who knows? I'm giving it a 2.5 in the silly star rating system and throwing up my hands.

One of the elements Iliadis wanted to avoid with the film, given its graphic nature, was turning it into "torture porn". For Craven and Iliadis, the film primarily illustrates how even the most normal of families can be driven to commit evil acts if pushed too far. And such a church was built in the 1300s and still stands at Karna in Sweden. No churches will be built because of the other films, no parents will ask forgiveness and few members of the audience will think they should.

A storm forces Krug, Francis, Sadie, and Justin to seek refuge at a nearby house. Justin is the only one to deduce that the inhabitants, John and Emma, are Mari's parents, and intentionally leaves Mari's necklace on the counter to alert them about their daughter. When John and Emma find Mari barely alive on their porch, and the necklace on the counter, they realize that Mari's tormentors are the people in their guest house.

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