“Last House on the Left” a bad remake of a bad movie
By Michael Knox, mknox@modernfilmzine.com
Just about the only good thing I can say about this movie is that at least it looks more professional than the 1972 original in which the movie is based.
I can’t attest to that personally, but my friend who watched the movie said the original “The Last House on the Left” had a much more amateurish look.
Which prompted me to ask, “So what you are telling me is we are about the watch a remake of a movie that was bad in the first place?” My friend responded, “Pretty much.”
That made no sense at all to me, except for the popularity of Wes Craven’s original. But if this movie was any indication of what the original was like, I would have to agree. This is a bad movie.
The first problem is the glacial pace it takes to set up the movie. I’m watching the movie and I KEEP waiting for the action to get to the last house on the left plot, and I just keep waiting. I finally ask my friend, “How long have we been watching this movie?” He responded, “About a year now.”
It did feel like it had been a year. The set up of the movie is slow and has an o.k. ending.
My biggest problem with the film was there were no characters I really cared about. The family is a bunch of yuppies who are so rich that they have a summer home with it’s OWN guest house. And when the father sends his daughter out to have a good night he doesn’t give her $20 but hands her a fist of $20s.
The characters are flat and dull and they waste an abundance of time swimming to only have it be a set up for the story. Dull.
Plus, this movie suffers from the “you dumb bitch” disease. The whole thing that leads to the family facing off against the villains is when a girl decides to smoke pot in a strange town with a strange guy she has only just met, going to his sketchy motel. Deooooooh.
And when you are stuck in the middle of a car, with homicidal maniac #1 to the left and #2 the right, with #3 homicidal maniac driving, you do not take a car cigarette lighter to a person with a gun, thinking you’ll escape. You’ve just gone and pissed EVERYBODY off.
The logic in this movie is pretty bad too. One girl gets slammed face first in a sink and into the floor, but no bruise despite hearing a horrible “theunk!” slam against the surface. Another duh moment was when the mother is cooking on an electric oven, even after the power has gone out.
The one thing I can say about the movie is it has some unintentional humor that you can pretty much, “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” to. I burst out laughing when the main villain shouts, “You all did a real number on my brother. You fucked him all to hell,”—- or words to that effect, since I’ve already forgotten the quote. Much like the movie.
I will say this… if you do see the movie you’ll get to watch a man microwave a guy’s head to death. True story.
Other than that its a grisly act in creating characters you don’t really care for who get slaughtered in ways that don’t really interest you. Do yourself a favor and just wait for the DVD. And to just see how bad the original was I’m going to force myself to watch the original to see if my friend was right.
But if he is right then, really, what can you expect from a movie that’s a remake of just another bad movie?
