Directed by: Dennis Iliadis
Starring: Garret Dillahunt, Riki Lindhome, Spencer Treat Clark, Sara Paxton, Monica Potter, Tony Goldwyn, Martha MacIsaac, and Aaron Paul
Plot: After kidnapping and brutally assaulting two young women, a gang led by a prison escapee unknowingly finds refuge at a vacation home belonging the parents of one of the victims -- a mother and father who devise an increasingly gruesome series of revenge tactics.
I've said a few times in the past that Wes Craven's first film, "The Last House on Left", was a bad movie. And I stand by that statement, the cinematography was primitive even for the time, the effects were almost non-existent, the performances of the killers were good but the rest of the cast were atrocious, and the movie kept trying to intersperse moments of humor in between all the violence with the use of two bumbling police officers that made it seem less like a dark comedy and more like the most fucked up episode of "The Andy Griffith Show" in existence.
That being said, "The Last House on the Left" was a very influential movie. There's a reason the film is so well known among the horror crowd, a reason why Wes Craven launched a (admittedly flash-in-the-pan) career out of it. It was a deliberately debased, disgusting, and mean-spirited film that exposed the audience's fears. It wasn't safe, it wasn't escapism, and it did a great job of getting under your skin. Which in turn makes it that much more of a shame that the movie was terrible even by exploitation film standards.
I was maybe the only person who actually got excited when I heard this movie was being remade. Most of the internet decried the ruining of another masterpiece, apparently remembering the spectacle rather than the movie or perhaps thinking of a movie that might have actually been good.
So if you've seen this trailer then you know the plot, the progression, and the ending. But for the 15 million of you who said, near in unison, "this trailer shows everything so I don't feel I need to see the movie." Shut the fuck up and go play in traffic. The good thing about the spoilerific trailer is I don't have to be careful about spoilers.
So the Collingswood family composed of daughter Mari (Sara Paxton), father John (Tony Goldwyn), and mother Emma (Monica Potter) go on vacation at their nicer-than-your-actual house lake home. (To be fair, John is a doctor, so it at least makes sense that this horror movie family is upper-middle class.)
So Mari borrows the car and goes to town to see her friend Paige (Martha MacIsaac) who works at the grocery store in town. As they're talking, creepy loner Justin (Spencer Treat Clark) overhears Paige ask Mari if she still smokes Marijuana.
Justin offers to give Paige some really good weed if she allows him to buy cigarettes even though he isn't legal. The two girls take Justin back to his motel room where they get caught up smoking when Justin's uncle Francis (Aaron Paul) and father's girlfriend Sadie (Riki Lindhome) who just got back from breaking his father Krug (Garret Dillahunt) out of prison and brutally killing two police officers. Unfortunately the dashboard camera on the police car caught Sadie and Francis busting Krug out so the three of them are wanted for murder.
Now naturally with their faces posted on the front of the local newspaper they can't let Mari and Paige go now so they kidnap the girls and make for an escape through the mountains in the Collingswood's SUV. Mari outfoxes the criminals, leading them toward the Collingswoods' lake house and then tries to escape, causing Krug to wreck the car in the middle of nowhere.
This is where things take a turn for the horrifying. Sadie, Francis, and Krug all take turns beating on Mari for causing their only form of escape to wreck. Paige attempts to escape and Francis, Sadie, and Krug take off after her.
Paige is caught and the two girls are then stripped down. Paige decides to smart off to Krug and is then killed. After this Mari is raped and then escapes by swimming away, but Krug manages to shoot her before she can get away.
We see Mari floating face-up in the lake, apparently dead as it begins to rain. The remaining four, all injured from the car wreck or the tussle that followed, head looking for medical help and hopefully another ride. Unfortunately, the only house for miles is the lakehouse owned by Mari's parents.
The four come upon Mari's parents who offer them the guest house to stay in. Justin sees Mari's picture on the refridgerator and, feeling responsible for what has happened, leaves her necklace wrapped around the coffee mug in the kitchen for her mother to find.
The four go out to the guest house for the evening and Mari's parents are left alone in the house when she comes home. Mari, having just barely survived the bullet wound, has managed to find her way home. Seeing the necklace on the coffee cup and seeing that Mari has been shot and raped, her parents put the whole mess together.
Initially they plan to escape but they can't find the keys to the boat and left without a car and no houses for miles there's no way then can possibly hope to get out without the killers noticing. This plan is furhter exacerbated when Francis comes over from the guest house for something to drink. He stumbles upon Mari and suddenly Emma devises a plan to kill him. After dispatching him in an extrememly cruel manner they decide to go and take care of the rest of the group and get revenge.
Sara Paxton is the "hero" of the movie even though she doesn't have much of a part in the second act of the film. This time around the script is a bit more merciful in that it lets Mari live unlike in the original. Some claim this is weakening the story by not actually killing her but I felt almost like this was worse, at the halfway point of the original film it was very clear that Mari was done anyway, she more or less just let herself get killed, her pain was over. This new version of Mari is going to have to live with what's happened and what her parents had to do to protect her.
Paxton doesn't play a character, she plays a human being. Mari isn't some random teenager just there to fill a spot until she gets killed, she's a beautiful and articulate girl with dreams and a personality. She's smart, she's sweet, and she's good but not over-the-top good like the last girl in most horror movies is. She's clearly done the normal things teens have done and that's what makes her more human. The viewer is quickly made to fall in love with Mari and that's why what happens to her next is so disturbing.
This realism is further pulled off by the actors that play Paxton's parents. Monica Potter does a passable job, she's the typical movie mother and plays it with enough realism but it's Tony Goldwyn's performance that hammers things home. As John tends to his daughter's wounds, trying to seal the bullet wound and stop the bleeding using a kitchen knife heated in the fireplace, Mari lets out a whimper of pain and he replies in a patronizing voice "I know baby... I know" as if he were removing a splinter from a child's finger. Moments later when he finds blood on her thigh and sees she's been raped you see the look of horror and outrage and then ultimately blind anger on his face. These subtle tics serve to really tug your heart strings and really show the kind of mother/daughter dynamic that makes these people more than simple characters.
Of course the victims aren't the only performances that stick out. While Riki Lindhome and Aaron Paul play Sadie and Francis every bit as crazy as their 70s counterparts, it's Garret Dillahunt's Krug that really sticks out.
In the original film Krug was a nutcase who got his own son addicted to heroin just so he would have control over him. He sent his son out to find two girls just for the purpose of raping and killing them. In the original film when they find Mari's picture in the Collingswood home, Krug laughs. Even when he finds out that Mari's parents know what he's done he doesn't care. He's the sort of evil crazy bastard that Hollywood pumps out a dime a dozen. Krug isn't scary because Krug doesn't actually exist.
This is why Garret Dillahunt's Krug is so superior. Krug isn't evil for the sake of being evil, he's a bully. Krug is a man who values control over everything, he doesn't addict Josh to heroin he just beats the shit out of him when he acts up. When they steal a car who drives? Krug. Who kills Paige? Krug. Who rapes Mari? Krug. He doesn't do horrible things because he can, he does them because they question his authority and his control. Krug is a sociopath and a control freak and that's what makes him scary, because there are lots of people like him. We hear about people like him all time, they're constantly in the news for keeping people captive, torture, murder. They know what they did was wrong but feel no remorse. That is a real monster and why Dillahunt's performance is so well done.
Spencer Treat Clark's performance as Justin compliments Dillahunt's. Justin plays the obvious victim of abuse by not just his father, but his uncle and Sadie as well. Justin is withdrawn and typically keeps his eyes cast down. You can tell that he hates the people he's with and you can see that he wants nothing more than to stop what's happening to these girls but he can't get up the nerve to do it. Ultimately he does get up the nerve, but even then it's only the nerve to give the Collingswoods the tools to stop his father, not to actually do anything. His final triumph is bittersweet but much better than in the original where Krug convinces his son to shoot himself in the head.
In the age of "Hostel", "Saw", "Wolf Creek", "Captivity", "The Devil's Rejects", and a plethora of other cheap torture movies this film could have easily falling into the same trappings as the aformentioned. In fact given the recent "torture porn" fad it's impossible to shock audiences the same way that the original did and nigh-impossible to make this movie as painful as that one was at the time. Hell, by today's standards the original "Last House on the Left" is rather tame.
This is why director Iliadis doesn't torture the characters, he tortures us for watching. The cinematography doesn't give a lot of long shots or establishing shots and this is because it doesn't want a passive audience. Iliadis goes for substance over spectacle, he keeps the camera in close.
When Paige is stabbed we don't watch from a distance as Krug quickly stabs her. We watch the intensity on his face, we watch Paige gradually register more and more pain, we hear the blade slowly and laboriously part each layer of flesh as it goes into her abdomen.
When we see Mari's rape it doesn't show the typical man on top woman grinding his hips between her legs. This is far worse, the camera is left on Mari's face as she cries and weeps and ultimately goes near catatonic. You see the pain and suffering on her face and you're made to feel it.
These subtle things are what seperates gratuitous schlock from art. This isn't about seeing how nasty things can get it's about being witness to true pain and suffering and it's done beautifully.
Of course, once the second act starts the violence is about spectacle but that too has a reason. The audience has just watched what these people have done to these two girls, we want to see them dead as much as the Collingswoods. We want to see them suffer, and that's exactly what they do. Subtlety is thrown to the wind and violence and revenge become the centerpieces of the film. This never seems to over the top or ridiculous like in the original movie though, so it's acceptable.
However the final note of the film, the infamous "microwave scene" that was glimpsed in the trailer may have went a bit too far. It straddles the line between acceptable and over the top as it's easily the goriest moment in the movie and seems a bit too typical.
"Last House on the Left" gives this concept the quality and artistic style it's always deserved. I am glad to see this finally portrayed in the right light and seen the way it should have been.
I give "The Last House on the Left" a 5 out of 5.
No comments:
Post a Comment