The Last House on the Left: Critic Reviews

This remake is merely vile (and dull), with a badly miscast Tony Goldwyn as the raging dad who makes revenge for his daughter's violation look more gratuitously brutal than the crime.

I suspect the movie's sound designers deserve some kind of an award: thanks to them, the damage one can inflict with small appliances and a giant grudge is all too clear.

The narrative structure is ingenious and sexual assault is at least shown as having dramatic and human consequences of some sort, if only in the context of revenge. Wasn't the original movie enough?

Not only is it plodding and completely predictable, the carnage is rendered slowly and quasi-reverentially, making the whole brutal experience come off like torture porn.

In the end, like virtually every other remake that has been released recently, it's polished and predictable.

This remake plods to its finale.

It fails, through its villainy; this trio of baddies resembles a dive-bar slumming suburban psychobilly band, no meth-breath hazards.

Last House on the Left is so stomach-churningly anti-human it makes you wonder why Goldwyn...and Potter signed on.

In this era of torture porn, this film seems intent on reconnecting audiences with the power and intensity of real-life, even quiet and casual creepiness.

Unlike the slew of Michael Bay- produced slasher remakes, this is not an idea-free flick. And Craven (shepherding producer on this remake) believes in character. More, he believes, in engaging what the word "horror" means.

Extremely entertaining if you don't mind being morally corrupted at every juncture.

I'm giving it a 2.5 in the silly star rating system and throwing up my hands.

This film...is what it is: a stark story of bloodthirstiness quenched, first by the obvious antagonists, then by sympathetic, civilized characters who avenge the atrocities that have come before.

What registers now is the simple cruelty of fate, as unlucky coincidences lead to the direst of consequences.

The Last House on the Left is the best in the latest crop of slasher remakes. Admittedly, that is faint praise.

Sure, the movie is predictable (a convenient storm causes power outages and therefore the dark house is creepily candlelit and who knows who's lurking behind the door), but it keeps its audience on edge.

Someone somewhere will probably try to foist The Last House on the Left remake off as some sort of social commentary. Don't be fooled. It's not.

Unnecessary on every level save the paramount commercial one.

The remake is much glossier but also takes place mostly in real time, using long takes, genuinely disturbing violence and stretches with no dialogue to pin you to the story.

This is a horror movie that illustrates the difference between cringing and feeling.

Do not go to this movie if you simply seek entertainment. If you're a sociologist tracking the decline of civilization over the past four decades, you're in for a night of solid research.

A deliberate, underplayed horror movie that is truly shocking.

This film is only for those who go in with open eyes and understand what they're in for.

Stripped of that sociological context, the extreme brutality here can't help but feel more than a little exploitative, especially where the film's female victims are concerned.

Audiences with a brain cell left have only one choice: Look for the first exit on the right.