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The Last House on the Left (2009)

DvSag

The Void in the Triforce
Joined
Mar 4, 2009
Location
New Jersey
EDIT BY MASES: Moved to Movies section, but I'm adding this notice because this post contains gruesome material. Please disregard this thread if you are not interested in gruesome, torture, or horror films.


I just saw The Last House on the Left last night.
It wasn't the greatest movie I've ever seen, but there is one particular scene that is still burnt uncomfortably into memory.

Early into the movie, there's a scene where one of the two teenage girls calls one of their captors "pathetic" and is stabbed repeatedly, left to bleed out and ultimately die in her friend's arms. This actually isn't too bad, because I've seen many deaths in many movies in the past and though this was morbid, I'm very used to something like this by now. Gruesome, and very sad. Just right for a horror flick.

However, this isn't what got me agitated. What really got me was the next segment. After the girl is left dying on the ground, they strip the second girl and the main villain brutally rapes her from behind. I've seen movies that have held the subject of rape, but I've never seen a rape scene portrayed like this. Wes Craven (Director) filmed the entire rape from start to finish. Every inappropriate motion, every tear from the girl's eyes, all on film. Not only was this unnerving, but the entire time the girl is crying and screaming, and halfway through the girl cries for help from the teenage boy character who had unintentionally got her into this situation and is now sitting and watching the entire thing happen.

I'm still very irritated and disturbed by this portion of the movie. The rest of the movie was just a murder-spree gore-fest. People beat the crap out of each other, body parts are removed, people shot and lobotomized, and one character explodes; but nothing makes me feel more disgusting than the rape scene. It was all I could think of through the entire movie, and even through the night and today.

I know how the magic of cinema works, but I liked it better when some of the more carnal things in movies were left implied for the imagination to translate.
 
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Amelie

Air Dancer
Joined
Jan 6, 2009
Location
Home
Im sorry if this offense anyone. But this is just disgusting and wrong. I dont care if its fake because its in a movie. My mother said she saw the original movie and it scared her to death and she never even wants to see the remake. She told me to stay away from it. She would not tell me why... but now I know. its just wrong. Sure... its a horror movie. But it makes me think the director is a sick pervert to portray a real rape scene and film it. All of it.

Why would anyone sit there and watch that part of the movie? Sorry again if this is a bit over reacting.. but thats just sick and wrong.
 

Alter

www.zeldainmypocket.com
Joined
Jan 23, 2009
Location
Point blank, On Your Six.
Check out this review of it. It's why I decided not to see it. I boldfaced the part I believe that you're talking about.

It could've been worse.

So says Wes Craven, director of the original version of The Last House on the Left (and producer of this remake). Had they redone his 1972 version today, shot for shot, it would have been "triple, quadruple X," he tells aintitcool.com.

Instead, he says, they actually backed off the violence a bit here. One of the girls lives this time around, for instance. And some of the torture scenes aren't quite as humiliating. Gone is a scene in which the kidnapped girls are forced to perform sexual acts on each other and urinate in their clothes. Deleted is a horrific moment involving castration. Nor does this version feature any exposed intestines, as the original did.

Craven says they've dialed down the violence so far, in fact, that "I bet you could put the blood in the film into a teacup."

He's exaggerating, of course. There's plenty of blood in this dark remake. Plenty.

But the truth is, it's not the blood that gets to you: It's the film's sense of reality. The victims here don't just die. They linger, in agony, until they finally gasp their last. And it's that sense of reality—not its graphic gore—that originally ran The Last House on the Left afoul of the Motion Picture Association of America when the film's rating was still pending.

"We had the MPAA tell us ... that the problem with the rape isn't so much that it's rape but that it's so real, which just tells you something," Craven said. "That's one step short of saying it should be entertaining, or it shouldn't upset you. But the whole point of it is that it's deeply, deeply unsettling and upsetting."

So if Craven and director Dennis Iliadis set out to create an unsettling, upsetting film, they've succeeded. This is a bruising, jagged story of rape and retribution. It is very far removed from what most people would tag "entertainment."

But Craven and Iliadis still want you to see it. Trust me: You don't. This is the last house you'd ever want to walk into.

From the mouths of the directors. They intended it to be hurtful and disturbing to the viewers. One of my female friends went and saw it and ended up in tears after it was over.

Take my advice: stay away from this movie. It will hurt even the toughest soul.
 

Amelie

Air Dancer
Joined
Jan 6, 2009
Location
Home
I know some horror movies are actually good or at least not sick and disgusting. There is no rule in movie making (that I know of) that says you must have disgusting and realistic rape scenes to make a horror movie. I think the makers of this movie are extremely disturbed and evil.
 

Hanyou

didn't build that
And this is why I, in general, don't watch horror movies. Sick stuff like this, I just don't see any value in it as entertainment. All it does is depress me.

Depends. A lot of my favorite films have horror elements...especially in the sci-fi/ horror genre. Consider Alien, The Fly (an extremely dramatic and intelligent film), The Thing, and even quite possibly The Omega Man (though to a much lesser extent). There are also thrillers in the vein of Hitch**** and Silence of the Lambs. I find none of these films except to a certain degree Silence of the Lambs morally questionable. Psycho, one of the original horror films, is brilliant.

Even slasher films are okay. A lot of the zombie flicks are either silly or make a good point; Night of the Living Dead never gets enough credit, I think, for the social questions it raises. Some movies, like Peter Jackson's Brain Dead (not a horror film, but part of the spinoff genre), are so over-the-top and silly that they qualify as legitimate comedies and there isn't much wrong with them. Now, I'm hardly a fan of the horror genre--I'm easily scared, and I've never played a survival horror game all the way through for this reason. But at least some of the movies I like are part horror films.

Still, I find myself agreeing with you. The horror genre as a whole suffers from at best amorality and at worst immorality. It's getting worse.

Consider the movies we've become accustomed to. What justification is there for the pure celebration of torture that is the Saw series? Oh, I understand that maybe the first one was intellectual; Seven is graphic but it asks smart questions and avoids being "torture porn" as a result. But what of Saw 2? 3? etc. What of the Hostel films? We have fallen in love with the kind of violence that is inherently destructive. We've fallen in love with watching people writhe in pain. The "shock factor" of Saving Private Ryan was not intended for entertainment. Even the controversial Passion of the Christ did not bask in its own violence. You can't convince me that the Saw and Hostel series are somehow on the same plane. Hell, you can't even convince me that the supposed masterpiece A Clockwork Orange is morally passable; I watched the whole thing all the way through and while I don't remember the violence being particularly explicit, several moments early in the film almost trivialized rape.

And yet, I can already see myself being condemned in more academic circles because I am not receptive to "art." Rest assured; I have no intent of banning the material. I'm just exercising my freedom to hate it.

A reasonable person ought to know the difference, though. And from what it sounds like, this film falls in just the same category--exploitation. Torture and rape are unique in that they are the worst pain--physically, mentally, and emotionally--that a human can probably experience. We must be careful in our portrayals. We must always ensure that victims of these worst crimes are protected, that if videos are taken of these acts, they remain illegal. Yes, they are quite worse from murder in itself, because they are always selfish and malicious. There is no place for them in a civilized society.

Our justice system recognizes that their pain is not entertainment. Why can our filmmakers not do the same?

Edit: I know I should have done this before, but so that I knew what I was talking about I decided to go ahead and research this film. It's based on a very old Swedish ballad. The ballad has been tastefully transferred to film before (see The Virgin Spring), and the subject matter is understandably disturbing. Obviously, it is a story that would have to be told in a tasteful and respectful manner.

I discovered that there are at least four films based on the story, and while Roger Ebert has given this one a 2.5, he gave an earlier iteration (not a Craven one, but a ripoff of the original called Chaos) a much lower score and basically declared it tasteless. Here's his little schpiel on that: [link].

That Roger Ebert has probably given some of the films I bashed high scores is not entirely relevant; I agree with the general principles he laid out here. Perhaps Last House on the Left is not the most tasteless film ever made (I will never know) but horror as a genre seems to have become less and less human, and that is the general point I am trying to make. This is not entertainment.

Edit 2: I can't write the name Hitch**** without it starring my post to death? Lol.
 
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Mike Pothier

Lord Shaper
Joined
Apr 5, 2008
Location
Southern California
I think I should clarify. What I meant was, I don't really enjoy newer horror movies. It seems like there's a competition on who can out gross the last movie, and it makes me sick.

I do, however, love suspense movies, and if its horror with emphasis on suspense instead of gore, I'm all there. A good example was The Skeleton Key, which I enjoyed immensely. My favorite horror movie is Halloween, which is short on gore, high on thrills. Alien is a close second, which I consider more horror then science fiction, unlike its sequels.
 

UsayEldaZay

Designed with you in mind
Joined
Dec 29, 2008
Location
Kazakhstan
The horror elements in a movie are getting very graphic and painful to watch these days. If you really want to see a soul crushing movie, see The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. That made me depressed for like 5 weeks. The Last House on the Left's previews depicted it to look kind of good but after reading these last few posts, I will not be seing it....
 

DvSag

The Void in the Triforce
Joined
Mar 4, 2009
Location
New Jersey
I don't know how many of you have seen this, but there was also a new movie that came out fairly recently. It's called "Funny Games".

It's actually, shot for shot, a remake of a French film of the same name, I believe. Anyway, THAT was a good horror movie. It actually had a similar theme, but a lot of the more gruesome things were left out of the film, but were still implied. By no means was this movie as grotesque as TLHotL(2009), but I still never want to see it again. It just got me so aggravated, but it was filmed so tastefully that I whole-heartedly approve of anyone watching it for the first time.
 

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