Real horror

Back in 1974, when Wes Craven released the original Last House on the Left, the film contained so much violence (including a horrific rape scene) that it got an X rating and was banned in Britain. He reportedly got an R in the U.S. because of a friend on the ratings board, but the film wasn’t released uncut in Britain until last year.

Being a horror fan, I’m surprised I never saw the original, even if it was released before I was born. That said, I walked into the Tinseltown theater a blank slate, knowing only that 1) it was a remake, and 2) Wes Craven produced it. Craven’s involvement actually made me expect something along the lines of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Boy, was I wrong.

The remake, while slightly different from its predecessor, follows the same basic storyline. A teenaged girl, Mari (Sara Paxton), and her parents (Monica Potter and Tony Goldwyn) head to their summer home for vacation. Once there, Mari heads off to hang out with an old friend in town, where they bump into the son of a recently escaped convict.

The convict, Krug (Garret Dillahunt), and his cohorts return to find the girls and things go from good to bad very, very quickly.

The thing that sets The Last House on the Left apart from most of the horror films we see these days is its basis in reality. The targets aren’t a bunch of dumb teenagers. The killer isn’t a deranged, possibly long-dead, psychopath. The violence isn’t all axes and chainsaws. (Note to the squeamish: A particularly gruesome rape scene sent a handful of people out of the theater.)

The standout performance here has to be by Dillahunt, who plays a terrifying bad guy, balancing his psychotic side with charm. But everyone else delivers, too, making the fear feel real, which is what makes the movie itself stand out.

This latest in a string of horror remakes succeeds in exactly the same way the original did by presenting a real horror, using real violence—a few scenes are disappointing based purely on the fact that they stoop to a level of over-the-top gore—and for that reason, these films are truly scary in a way most other horror movies are not.