The Last House on the Left

This remake, while slightly different from its predecessor, follows the same basic storyline as Wes Craven’s 1974 original. 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, well, 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. This latest in a string of horror remakes succeeds in exactly the same way the original did by presenting a real horror with real violence. Feather River Cinemas, Paradise Cinema 7 and Tinseltown. Rated R