Writer: Mohd Johan Arif

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Watch this if you liked: "The Last House On The Left” (1972), "Fear"

Directed by Iliadis, "The Last House On The Left" is a remake of a 1972 film of the same name, originally written and directed by Wes Craven. Wes Craven is considered the King of Horror with his famed "Nightmare On Elm Street" film featuring the iconic villain, Freddy Krueger. He is also the director of the trend-setting "Scream" trilogy that implemented a genuine tongue-in-cheek approach, bringing a breakthrough in horror movies.

After kidnapping and brutally assaulting two young women, a gang led by a prison escapee named Krug unknowingly finds refuge at a vacation home belonging to one of the victim's parents. Upon knowing the information, the parents devise an increasingly gruesome series of revengeful tactics.

The film comes across as an extremely gory and obscene movie. The movie boasts a lot of controversial subjects such as abuse, violence, rape and gore. Unfortunately, those are the only things that would probably make sense and grab the audience's attention during the movie, despite a weak and illogical storyline.

The main reason why the storyline is that weak and illogical is because the victims in the movie were given too many chances to attempt an escape. The criminals are also illogical in the sense that they've missed out a lot of opportunities to kill their victims when the victims fight back. In reality, I'm sure most hostages would have been killed instantly if the murderers do not want anybody to know their dirty little secret.

The producer was told to keep the storyline of the original movie but somehow a 1972 style storyline would just not cut it to the audience anymore. This show was Wes Craven's first attempt in making a horror movie. At that time, he might have thought that filling a horror movie with just violence and extreme gore is the way to make his horror film different and make the audience to jump out of their seat. Even though it did work back then, Wes Craven definitely had moved on to polish more on his storyline and make his horror films even better. Another reason why this movie is bad is because it is slowly-paced. The real story only starts at the second half of the movie and the first half is like a long introduction.

Cinema Online, 16 June 2009