Last House On The Left vs. Last House On The Left -- TKO!

Down the trail of remakes I was recently up against the 2009 version of Wes Craven's terror classic The Last House On The Left from 1972. Arguably it all started with Ingemar Bergman's Virgin Spring (1960) and if you've seen both his and Craven's masterpieces you would notice their relationship. I'm not going to say that I'm particularly fond of Mr. Craven's complete works, however, LHOTL is by far (once and again, only halfway rivalled by A Nightmare On Elm Street) his best film and thus most worthy being a part of my humble DVD collection...

But now for the 2009 remake then... It's certainly not a bad movie, by a long shot, and not a makeover that you should be ashamed of watching. Then again, though bloody and violent, it crashes out quite badly in the cruelty department -- what I mean is that it lacks the feeling och "terror" that made the Craven film so groundbreaking and horrifying. Of course there's a grisly of especially cold-hearted stabbing to one of the kidnapped girls in the forest, but the whole setup is as stroking a cat's fur compared to the way it was all conducted in 1972. Then we fast forward to the parents' house -- again, the gut-wrenching revenge lacks some raw power of the original; though I don't mind saying that it's quite entertaining and spectacular in its own right. On the plus side we don't have any redneck, farmboy police officers doing their slap-stick thang in this movie; and I didn't mind the fact that some characters were saved from the slaughter, since the real terror was gone at this time in the movie.

The worst thing is that the Krug of this installment is no way near the atom's size compared to that of the one and only original, David Hess. The same goes for most of the other characters, but not in an equally drastic way. Yet another thing, apart from the earlier mentioned "terror" ingredient, is the way Last House.09 ultimately ends: The microwave scene is quite out of character; and as a shock effect to the movie it somewhat destroys the 2009 year LHOTL in its attempt to be a real good mainstream alternative to the original film. To be more specific: The more subtle horror and suspenseful mood that should have made this remake stand proudly is ruined -- what a shame!