* * *
Just like the original: when a different middle-class couple realise that the drifters they have let into their home are responsible for the rape and murder of their daughter, friendly hospitality once again turns into bloody revenge.
Starring Sara Paxton, Martha MacIsaac, Garret Dillahunt, Aaron Paul, Tony Goldwyn, Monica Potter
Written by Adam Alleca, Carl Ellsworth
Produced by Wes Craven, Sean S Cunningham, Marianne Maddalena
Duration 110 minutes
How exciting – my first review of a remake of a film I’ve already reviewed!
I can’t remember
whether back in 2009 the word ‘remake’ was still in vogue. In more recent years,
recycling/resurrecting existing intellectual property has tended to be called either a ‘reboot’, which takes stories we know and reinterprets them (the
PLANET OF THE APES movies come to mind, or the various iterations of BATMAN), or
a ‘legacy sequel’ (good ones: SCREAM 2022, TOP GUN: MAVERICK, BLADE RUNNER 2049,
BAD BOYS FOR LIFE; bad ones: COMING 2 AMERICA, THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS, TRON:
LEGACY, HALLOWEEN).
LAST HOUSE ’09 is definitely a straight-up remake. It’s not trying to update for the 21st Century the tale of ostensibly respectable parents avenging their murdered children by brutally dispatching the culprits. It’s certainly not a continuation of the same timeline or a long-in-gestation direct sequel.
Horror has to have the most remakes of all the major genres. There’s been a lot of ’em! And it would be wrong to dismiss them as uniformly bad just out of principle even if, for sure, it tends to be potluck which way things go.
Bringing back the creator(s) to produce can seems like a good sign: the LAST HOUSE and HILLS HAVE EYES remakes are both pretty decent and have Wes Craven on board as a producer, whereas he went nowhere near the unpleasant A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET from 2010. I find it hard to see this as a coincidence. On the other hand, fellow genre-legend John Carpenter is credited on 2005’s disastrous THE FOG, and has admitted more generally that he doesn’t care about how good the new versions of his films are, so long as he gets paid.
So anyway, yeah: ‘pretty decent’. That basically sums up this THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. It’s hard to imagine anyone preferring it, unless they found the early-’70s fashions and slang from before too distracting. But LAST HOUSE ’09 does omit certain elements from the original whose absence no one could possibly miss – I’m talking about the bumbling comedy cops who hitch a ride atop a truck loaded with chickens after their squad car breaks down, or the jolly closing tune with lyrics that cheerfully recount the grim events we've just sat through.
This version nails its forbearer's gruelling sense of impending dread to a tee, albeit in a slicker, bigger-budgeted, noughties kind of way. Garret Dillahunt managed to go straight from loveably dopey deputy in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN to one of the most effective amoral sickos in recent memory, his portrayal of the monstrous Krug certainly equalling David Hess’s.
It's longer than the first go-around, so pads the runtime out with some unnecessarily detailed character introductions for heroes and villains alike. It shows the world what Jesse Pinkman would be like if he himself broke bad beyond any possible redemption. The score sounds like John Murphy put his ‘In the House, in a Heartbeat’ from 28 DAYS LATER in as a temp track and then forgot to replace it.
And, all in all, I liked it. In the face of lazy, knee-jerk opinions about the limited value of remakes, I always lean on the fact that THE FLY and THE THING turned out to be two of the best films of the ’80s. LAST HOUSE ’09 is nowhere near that level, but it does what it sets out to do with competency and professionalism and just about earns its right to exist. It may have sprouted deep in the looming shadow of the original, but it still managed to grow in that shade into a perfectly edible… mushroom. So, there you go.
Three stars out of five.
Valid use of the
word ‘last’? It’s an isolated vacation home by
a lake this time, so the proximity to previous or subsequent houses is even
harder to determine than in the ’72 vintage. But why would, um, Greek director
Dennis Iliadis, known for, er, a film titled HARDCORE that doesn’t have
George C Scott in it, lie to us?
What would a movie called THE
FIRST HOUSE ON THE LEFT be about?
Right, so I have to do this again too.
OK, well, this time, let’s say the people living in that earlier house turn out
to be even more unhinged than Krug and company and slaughter the whole gang
seconds after welcoming them in, forgoing the act-three suspense and just
cutting straight to the grisly retribution.
Next time: THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS
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