The Last House on the Left is a horror remake of a classic from 1972, written and directed by master of horror Wes Craven. This one, released in 2009 was written by Adam Alleca and Carl Ellsworth and directed by Dennis Iliadis. Masters of horror, they are not. It's not even that the movie was terrible, but it's more that there just wasn't a lot that was good, either. The plot is somewhat similar. There are some psychos. They are on the run from the cops. They capture two female friends. They get rapey and kill the friend. The daughter who is the main character is left for dead. The parents find out about the killers and want revenge. The problem with the plot starts early. In the original, the two teenage female friends meet the younger part of the psycho group looking for weed before a concert. In the remake, they get invited to a seedy motel and are hanging out on the bed with the kid with the weed (who they just met), and then the father and uncle come in and instead of just kicking the girls out, they decide to tell them who they are and create all of this chaos. People in this film also get shot and it doesn't phase them. Mari even gets shot while swimming, and somehow is able to not only pass out but then continue to swim across the lake in a later scene. It just has too many poorly-written moments like this.
The problem is mostly with how the plot in this remake was executed. Wes Craven's plot had a lot more depth to it. Granted, it's a horror film, so plots are going to have holes, but a lot of scenes just didn't seem very thought out. This was a high-budget film that was in theaters, and for some reason, production companies give projects like this to people who aren't very experienced. Iliadis, and both Alleca and Ellsworth only had a handful of feature films before this. The same happened with the most recent Child's Play remake. The writer and director had almost 0 experience with feature films or horror. The Last House on the Left remake made over $46M at the box office despite having a reported budget of $15M, so, it was successful. But it wasn't good. With this kind of budget, it should have been.
Overall, we can't recommend this to anyone unless you just don't care, but the original is much better and more worth your time. The remake is sub-par. The changes in the plot aren't good, aren't executed well, and the writing overall feels lazy. The gore was pretty good, it had some great acting, including an appearance by a young Aaron Paul as one of the villains, and there were a couple of ok scenes, but for the most part, what killed this was the bad writing. You can safely avoid this, and if you are on the fence, watch the original instead.
