The Last House on the Left (2009)
Average Rating: 4.9/10
Reviews Counted: 148
Fresh: 61 | Rotten: 87
Excessive and gory, this remake lacks the intellectual punch of the 1972 original.
Average Rating: 4.6/10
Critic Reviews: 33
Fresh: 14 | Rotten: 19
Excessive and gory, this remake lacks the intellectual punch of the 1972 original.
liked it
Average Rating: 2.7/5
User Ratings: 976,613
My Rating
Movie Info
A pair of teenage girls are brutally raped and terrorized by a vicious gang of psychopaths, who subsequently find their cruelty returned tenfold when they seek sanctuary in the home of one of the victim's parents in this contemporary reworking of Wes Craven's controversial 1972 shocker. Shortly after arriving at her family's secluded lake house, Mari Collingwood (Sara Paxton) and her best friend are abducted by a sadistic prison escapee and his violent crew. Left for dead and nearly in shock
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Cast
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Tony Goldwyn
John Collingwood -
Monica Potter
Emma Collingwood -
Sara Paxton
Mari Collingwood -
Garret Dillahunt
Krug -
Aaron Paul
Francis -
Spencer Treat Clark
Justin -
Riki Lindhome
Sadie -
Martha MacIsaac
Paige -
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The Last House on the Left Trailer & Photos
All Critics (151) | Top Critics (33) | Fresh (65) | Rotten (89) | DVD (16)
Dennis Iliadis's remake retains its ferocious power and provocative themes, and thanks to a focused script that unfolds in real time, it ratchets up the suspense and sucks us into a remorseless cycle of violence and revenge.
Extremely entertaining if you don't mind being morally corrupted at every juncture.
It's that first 30 minutes that ruin this movie.
Boy, words can not express how much I just loathe and detest this movie.
In the end, like virtually every other remake that has been released recently, it's polished and predictable.
A shockingly mundane disappointment taken on its own and a deeply misguided refraction of the original.
If you must, seek out the original to see nasty things happen to nasty people in a nasty film.
the 70s campiness has been stripped away entirely. Now, it just seems like a studio-level snuff film made for no other purpose than to make its audience feel woozy.
The remake deviates from its source material, giving something new for fans of the original to enjoy/moan about, and employ some imagination with a few of the killings.
A great argument for the continuing trend of recycling old films, taking an overblown horribly flawed cult classic and turning it in to an utterly stellar revenge picture...
As remakes go, Last House On The Left is at least a decent addition to the 1972 classic.
This version is a capably, confidently, and chillingly effective opportunity to place ourselves in the worst possible shoes for a length of time.
Grim, vengeful horror film well made -- but NOT for kids.
Remaking Last House on the Left seemed like a dubious proposition at best...yet somehow the new HOUSE works better than expected.
... during a wave of pointless and heartless retreads of older material, this brings a surprising improvement over the original.
... superior [to the original] in that it makes clear the conflicting justification and degradation of the retaliation, establishing a grayer level of morality.
Of the two incarnations of this tale, I've gotta say the remake is a bit more watchable ... but it's definitely not better.
What's most disappointing about the 2009 version is that it strips all the moral ambiguity from the 1972 original of the same name.
Unlike the Craven film, there's little of the audience implication that made these visions of violated innocence and draining retribution so troubling.
Bucolic class warfare, while toying sadistically with the wrongheaded notion that victims likewise harbor inner homicidal maniacs waiting to be set free. But undeniably super-scary, just when you thought that genre had been done to death, no pun.
Not quite as bad as I thought it was going to be. The original was downright awful.
Given my particular distaste for both remakes and rape-revenge movies, I was as surprised as anyone to find that this is a better horror movie than it probably should be.
The new version is tamer than the original but still dwells unpleasantly on the daughter's rape; this made me ill-disposed towards the ensuing scenes of violent payback.
Audience Reviews for The Last House on the Left
Super Reviewer
Craven's version is all about shocking audiences and only consentrated in brutality and exploitation. Iliadis is much more interested in psychological undertones and the eerie atmosphere which dominates the whole film from beginning till the end.
Right from the stunning opening images, lensed by brilliant Sharone Meir, of dark and brooding forest to the last calm shots of sunny summer morning, this film holds your attention and takes you to the edge of your seat. It actually comes much more closer to an surreal nightmare with it's ethereal images of nature and oddly hypnotic mood.
This is a great example of how these kind of films should be made. Iliadis version of Craven's film is easily one of the better horror-films of this century. This is a must see for every thriller and horror fan.
Super Reviewer
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- Justin: Dad, look, I was just trying to liquidate some of the..
- Krug: Liquidate. Wow. Is that my word or yours?
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- Paige: You know what Mari? I think Justin here could be kind of cute if he lost his whole like creepy, hooded Unabomber kind of vibe he's got going on. Don't you think?
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Foreign Titles
- La Dernière maison sur la gauche (FR)
- La última casa a la izquierda (ES)










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