Oh, The Horror! #47: The Last House on the Left (Remake)

One of my god brothers introduced me to this film as he's a fan of both this and the original. I haven't seen the original and only heard about the movie until after the remake hit theaters. It seems my god brother is a big Wes Craven fan as he's introduced me to films such as People Under the Stairs and Serpent and the Rainbow. But anyways, he showed me this film and I can't quite say I loved it, but I was into it at least. The story follows a family, Emma (Monica Potter), John (Tony Goldwyn), and their daughter Mari Collingwood (Sara Paxton), who head out on vacation to their lake house. While convincing her parents to take the car and spend time with her best friend, Paige, they meet a young boy and got to his motel room and hang out. Everything is all fun and dandy until his father (Garret Dillahunt), uncle, and father's girlfriend come along and begin to torture Mari and Paige to the point of raping poor Mari in the woods. After all this, almost coincidentally (not too coincidentally, but whatev...), the criminal family make their way to John and Emma's home, both sides unsuspecting of their connection with each other. The tension between this is fairly well done and gets you interested in what's going to happen. It really becomes fun to watch when Emma and John figure out what these criminals have done and actually turn the tables on these killers and go all out on them.

This isn't a must see or total recommendation, but I do feel there are some winners in the film. The acting is fairly good, especially the main villain and the main parents (is Monica Potter trying to become a Scream Queen?). I really liked Potter in this film and I feel Paxton does some good stuff with her scenes. A lot of good tension rising moments throughout the movie but this film is rather passable although not terrible. The ending I felt could have been a lot stronger as I felt the protagonists could have done a bit more with the main villain, but that's just me... Nah, not just me, it would have been a stronger ending.

If you've nothing else to do, this is one of those films. Beyond that I wouldn't really recommend to go out of your way to catch this.

Directed by Dennis Iliadis.