The
Last House On The Left
Sara Paxton stars as Mari – a young teen girl heading out to
the lake with her parents, Emma (Monica Potter) and John (Tony
Goldwyn). It’s a small town, and their lake house is 6 miles
away from the nearest neighbor (you can still find isolated places like
that in America?). Sadly, when Mari and her friend, Paige (Martha
MacIsaac), meet a young boy, Justin (Spencer Treat Clark), it turns out
he is part of a gang of fugitives on the run.
They terrorize the young ladies and leave them for dead, but will the
gang be able to keep running when they show up at the lake house, and
John and Emma find out what they have done?
I know I just gave you a great deal of the plot, but the plot is not
all that important in The Last House on the Left.
This movie is all about the suspense, the terror, the emotional roller
coaster ride you take and the shocks delivered by director Dennis
Iliadas.
Parts of The Last House on the Left are among some
of the most
intense you have seen in movies this year as this evil gang proceeds to
brutalize two innocent young women, and the family displays horrible
savageness when
they fight back. The audience knows what is coming, but those
moments where we are held in suspense just a few moments more waiting for it to happen, or
hoping some twist will save the good people, have your heart beating
just a little faster, and holding your breath just a little longer.
Most of all, Iliadas makes the audience angry, which prepares us to
cheer when Emma and John decide to get revenge. They do what every
person sitting in that theater would want to do under the
circumstances, and the villains have displayed such abhorrent behavior,
we are glad to see them get what they deserve. Iliadas, using the
original premise put forth by Wes Craven and Ingmar Bergman, knows how
to get under our skin.
Sure, some moments are overly melodramatic, and writers Adam Alleca and
Carl Ellsworth provide some silly dialogue, while losing focus by
trying to insert an unnecessary story about the family’s
previous tragedy, but The Last House on the Left is
a movie without
pretense or any delusions of what it wants to be.
The Last House on the Left is Rated
R for sadistic brutal violence including a rape and disturbing images,
language, nudity and some drug use.
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