The Last House on the Left

Rating: 6.8/10

Genre: Thriller

Overall value for money and time: 6.5/10

A remake from the 1972 Wes Craven movie, two teenage girls were kidnapped and brought into the woods by a gang of escaped convicts. Leaving 1 killed and the other raped and supposedly killed off as well, they sought refuge at a nearby house that very same day due to bad weather. Unknowing to them, it belonged to the parents whose daughter was raped...

With a tagline "If bad people hurt someone you love, how far would you go to hurt them back?", one can expect the villians to suffer a terrible and deserving payback... or not. I thought this movie lacked a good number of "enhancers"; enhancers being parts of the movie which should have potentially increased the ratings of it.

First off, the villians themselves, were portrayed fairly vicious at the start, but seemed to simmer down a little throughout the movie. I'm not sure what the cause of it was, prolly due to bad acting, or maybe just that the script was weak, but I didn't feel extremely repulsive towards them. They kinda felt "pitiful" inside... The only scene that really made me scringed for justice was the "torture" scene of the 2 teenage girls.

Secondly, the parents themselves, were not even that vengeful when it came to giving payback to the villians... Actually, they didn't seem to intend it at all, but were forced into those circumstances. If so, why the tagline? On one hand, it felt realistic since her parents are no murderers themselves, but the lack of ability of them handling a 1 on 1 situation was too "feeblish" for me. There wasn't a villian which they had single-handedly wiped out...

Thirdly, *spoilers ahead*, the alliance of the leader's son at the end when he passed the gun over to the parents were totally far-fetched. It's true he left "hints" to the parents on the coffee table (the necklace of their daughter) but why should they ever trust him in the first place? Inching over to take a loaded gun from him while the rest were sleeping in bed was just too risky a scenario... What if the son only pretended to be good? In a real life situation, I don't believe "trust" will be so readily prominent...

All in all, this movie was too mildly "balanced". Both the villians and "heroes" were neither in their extremities and that somehow lowered the intensity of the film. It's the same for the genre of the movie, it falls on the fence between slasher and thriller, and since I've survived a Saw marathon and have caught worst films such as Hostel and The Devil's Rejects in terms of goriness, this movie felt ok for me.

It would have been much better if they had brought the repulsiveness of the The Devil's Rejects and have them taste the payback of the protagonist from Taken. In this case, it's also "balanced" but it's to both extremities...

Since it's such a mediocre movie, I would sit on the fence and confidently say, it's a movie you can give a go or pass but wouldn't regret it either way.