Often, remakes signify a growing lack of originality that seems to be burgeoning throughout Hollywood, and this stigma is often compounded two or three fold when a production company decides to remake a horror film. Some prime examples would be the most recent installments of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th or Rob Zombie’s Halloween and its intended celluloid progeny. However, one remake that has recently been a pleasant surprise is 2009’s The Last House on the Left.
As Wes Craven’s directorial debut, the original 1972 film isn’t the best of horror flicks, but it has that low-budget, cultish charm — replete with social satire — and it happens to be Craven’s first film, so completely trashing it would be denying that anyone of us wouldn’t mind some sketches from a juvenile Pablo Picasso.
The story is virtually the same in both versions. Two young girls venture on a road trip and decide to find some marijuana, which leads them into the hands of criminals who proceed to murder both of them in the 1972 version, but only one in the 2009 version. Though the intent is to murder both in the latter film, Mari Collingwood (Sara Paxton) survives the bullet wound, floats down a river, and crawls along the bank until surfacing outside of her parent’s summer camp where she makes her way to the porch and lies near death until her parents discover her. Aside from that variation, the murderers/rapists in both versions coincidentally stumble upon the Collingwood home and are offered a place to stay. Eventually, and in a similar fashion, Mrs. Collingwood deduces that the three criminals have murdered – or at least attempted to murder – Mari. This simultaneously leads to parental revenge, which ultimately answers the 2009’s tagline “If bad people hurt someone you love, how far would you go to hurt them back?”
While it is a slightly cheesy tagline inasmuch as it might be more appropriate to ask “If you’re daughter were raped and left for dead, how far would you go for revenge?,” it does point to one of the major disparities between the two films. In 1972’s version, both Phyllis and Mari are raped and eventually murdered, but all three of the assailants are imagined as sadistic murderers who have escaped from prison. Fred Podowski (Fred J. Lincoln) has his way with Phyllis at the apartment in which the girls are initially led and trapped. Krug Stillo (David Hess) is Mari’s rapist, carves his name in her chest with a switch blade in a rather torturous scene, and eventually shoots her three times as she enters the silently flowing water in a baptismal scene to cleanse herself of raputurous sweat and saliva, welcoming death over impurity.
To further illustrate their sadism, Fred, Krug, and Sadie, their female accomplice, corner Phyllis as she tries to escape and hold her firmly against a tree while all taking part in bleeding her to death. Craven’s camera work in this scene is crafty in that he avoids the snuff-horror angle by capturing the downward motion of knife-wielding hands and interspersing scrannel noise to symbolize the dozen stabs that impale Phyllis, but there is a mutual sadism insofar as the three take turns torturing this girl, only to expose the apogee of their derangement when they confront Mari again, producing Phyllis’ severed hand – complete with forearm – from Fred’s jacket. Thus, all three can be undoubtedly linked to Phyllis’ death.
However, in 2009’s version, Krug is the most sadistic and the only clear murderer of both Mari and Paige (formerly Phyllis). The other two – similarly Sadie (Riki Lindhome) but this time Francis (Aaron Paul) – purposely crash a truck into a cop car and break Krug from the backseat, and while Sadie and Francis are guilty of aiding and abetting an escape, they are not the incarcerated. Granted, they can’t be absolved of guilt because Sadie kills one of the officers, but this strikes me as more of an act of passion to preserve the life of her lover, Krug, which I will tackle a bit later.
Unlike the ’72 version, the sequence of events that leads the girls to Krug is also a bit different, but eventually all of the characters end up in the woods – this time after a car crash that Mari causes as she tries to rescue both Paige (Martha MacIsaac) and herself. Similarly, Paige tries to escape but is eventually cornered and returned; however, this time, only Krug is the assailant, and the other two make sure Mari can’t escape. Paige is stabbed twice and falls in a heap on the ground to bleed to death, but this version includes no amputation or orgy-style murder.
None of this makes the rape scene of Mari innocuous, though Director Dennis Iliadis films it craftily enough to evoke a visceral, lip-biting response in the audience while avoiding any gratuitous nudity or moaning that would make 2009’s version a snuffy-driven cousin of the original. However, there are some overall differences in Mari’s attack: one is that she is able to conjure enough energy after being raped to grip a small rock and take one lost shot at escaping her captors and rapist, which makes her a stronger character than 1972’s version. Striking Krug aside the head, Mari runs for the water and dives in, swimming as hard as she can. Here, Krug and the other two emerge from the reeds and stand at the water’s edge, firing three shots. A small spurt of blood tells the audience Mari has been hit, and she floats away, toes up, but doesn’t perish.
The other difference in the attack is that the audience – admittedly or not – gets a glimpse of humanity that lies latently behind Sadie’s rather vacant, shark-like eyes. As Mari is raped, Sadie turns away, seemingly struck by the surrealism of the entire situation; her lover is in a lascivious, physical discourse with another woman, and there is a moment where the audience could feel for Sadie and wonder why she is still so enamored with such a man. Likewise, this calls into concern the passion that she feels for Krug when she and Francis break him from the squad car. Where does this passion come from? What damage has been done to this young woman to forge such insecurity? What does Krug provide her with? At face value, perhaps these are irrelevant questions, but they illustrate the problem inherent in the curse of omission. As an audience, we are unaware of why Sadie does the things she does, but are subconsciously aware that something has damaged her, forcing her to join – and love – this reprobate. A similar glimpse of pain and humanity within Krug emerges toward the end of the film.
While Krug is in a battle for his life, his son Justin (Spencer Treat Clark) turns on him and holds a gun to his father’s head. The gun is unloaded, and the click takes the places of shattering skull, so there is no Oedipal catharsis, but Krug’s reaction is one of a forsaken father. “I took care of you!” he shouts at Justin, pinning him against a wall. “I took care of you!” Regarding this parent/child dynamic, Justin’s treason distracts Krug from his own self-preservation – he is at the same time being attacked by Mari’s father – and also alludes to some former circumstance in which he was deceived and turned on, possibly by Justin’s mother, who is referenced somberly as not being “around anymore.” Again, as the audience, we are unaware of the impetus for Krug’s demeanor and his personality, but are still provided enough sympathy to wonder what has driven him to such a criminal, sadistic existence.
In the grand scheme of things, Krug and his posse shouldn’t be absolved of their crimes, and I don’t wish to minimize the heinous acts of rape and murder, but there is a relevant curse of omission here that helps us as the audience demonize these criminals and sympathize – even root for – Mr. and Mrs. Collingwood when they have the opportunity to avenge Mari. But, here blossoms a burgeoning, ethical sticking point of the film.
After offering to put Sadie, Francis, and Krug up in their guesthouse, the Collingwoods discover Mari lying on the porch, soaked by the river and pouring rain, a bullet wound in her back, and signs of rape all over her legs and genitalia. Being a doctor, John Collingwood (Tony Goldwyn) patches Mari up enough to transport her via boat to a safer haven. This is all prior to discovering a signal left by Krug’s son Justin, which leads us down a trail of revenge.
And this is where the 2009 sticking point causes a gross deviation from the ‘72 version by alluding to something that Slavoj Zizek has referred to as an “ethical illusion,” which parallels Noam Chomsky’s notion concerning the hypocrisy of a government that persecutes an individual for a violent act, but condones the large-scale bombing of citizens and other countries by their own government in order to secure one’s standing. While both acts constitute murder, the latter becomes permissible because of omitted knowledge.
Often, the histrionics that have swelled to an attack on another nation often go unacknowledged, and because the violence persists over various acts in time and cannot be conveniently isolated in one individual, it is condoned or written off as “necessarily patriotic.” This same rationale can be applied to a similar hypocrisy within John Collingwood’s actions of torturous, passion-driven revenge. John – unlike the audience – is unaware of any criminal act aside from the rape of his daughter, and while Sadie and Francis can’t be seen as upstanding individuals, John and Emma imagine them as guilty as Krug in the attempted murder of Mari. Feeding off their own emotional derangement, John and Emma justify torturous revenge on two of the three criminals, and while we may root for John to punish Krug and the other two for what transgressions they have committed in the past, the Collingwoods lacks the omniscient knowledge that we possess, and in the end, his acts of torture – and his role as a divine agent of punishment – are ethically unjustified — and ultimately fashion John as an equivocal criminal.
The first act of torture comes against Francis. While he is clearly a creepy guy, unable to sleep, and slinking back into the main house to get one last drink before bed, Emma’s actions aren’t innocuous. Even though she is trying to keep him from catching a glimpse of Mari, who lies on the coffee table, her method of distraction to keep him in the kitchen is to seduce Francis, offer him wine, and assert that John has drunk too much and passed out upstairs. While shady, Francis can’t be blamed for the intent to take her up on her offer. Infidelity –or its intention – is not a capital crime – nor is accessory to rape – that carries the sentence of mangling someone’s hand in the garbage disposal while he writhes in agony before his skull is impaled with the claw-end of a hammer.
Likewise, Emma eventually shoots Sadie through the eye, but it’s important to recognize that Sadie is killed while trying to protect Krug, and she is unaware that the Collingwoods are Mari’s parents. Francis discovers this before dying, and Krug eventually puts the pieces together, but prior to her death, Sadie is merely protecting her lover from aggressive insurgents; in other words, she exhibits the same protective viciousness over Krug that Emma and John show toward Mari, and half of Sadie’s actions stem from being provoked by the bullet spray that enters her chest.
John initially intends to kill Sadie in an executionary style; sleeping in the arms of Krug, Sadie is completely unprotected in the truest sense insofar as nakedness symbolizes vulnerability. There’s a reason why Hitchcock chose to have Marion Crane killed while showering. Are we any more vulnerable and isolated from our surroundings than when we are naked and showering – or sleeping? John’s intention is to execute in cold blood, and this intent shouldn’t be obfuscated because he’s a poor shot. And while the audience sympathizes with where his anger stems from, his anger is misdirected — if it should be aimed at anyone, it would be Krug, not Sadie.
These two deaths are a major deviation from the ’72 version because of the lack of sadism lacquered onto the Sadie and Francis of the 2009 film. More importantly, the Collingwoods of the ’72 version stumble upon Mari’s dead, mutilated, and raped body outside of their door and down by the river. Therefore, the punishment of 1972’s Sadie and Freddie is justified because their actions resulted in Mari’s death, not her attempted murder.
What further deviates the original John Collingwood’s actions from 2009’s character is that an element of strict sadism lurks within him, much like we are supposed to see in Krug. In Wes Craven’s original, John’s rampage and Krug’s subsequent murder happens rather shortly after Mari’s body is discovered. While I’m not condoning murder, if one is going to cite the Code of Hammurabi or the oft-cited Leviticus 24:17 “[H]e that killeth any man shall surely be put to death,” then John has the right to seek retribution, and given the short span of time between the discovery of his daughter and his chainsaw-wielding antics, his crime could be considered one of passion and frantic reaction that comes from seeing your daughter’s mangled, lifeless body.
In contrast, 2009’s John Collingwood takes his time killing Krug. After Emma knocks Krug unconscious, the camera alternates between Emma, John, Mari, and Justin in a boat, traveling to the nearest doctor with shots of incisions being made in someone’s back and neck. When the camera resumes in linear time, Krug’s body is lying on a slab, his head moving, resting in front of an old microwave oven. Over him stands John, who with white-gloved hands places Krug’s head on the microwave plate, slowly expositing that he “had no rope,” and Krug should not try to move because John has paralyzed him by making small incisions is particular places. This is rather telling in that the incisions were made prior to transporting the four of them to safety, which means that John had ample amount of time to stew, relive the night’s events, contemplate his options, reject anything humane, elect not to call any branch of law enforcement, and choose to become the executioner of a man who – to John’s knowledge – raped his daughter. While rape is heinous, three people lie in the wake of one man’s crime that is not even a capital offense. But, we don’t see this because we’ve been trained not to entertain sympathizing with a criminal, though we ultimately root for one through the film’s second and third acts.
As Krug’s flesh burns and his head explodes in the microwave, we are left to wonder about the value of omission, and while Krug’s, Francis’, and Sadie’s deviations from social laws and norms shouldn’t be overlooked, and their crimes ultimately punished, there’s something to be said for the way in which we are manipulated by our own emotions and tend to obviate the moments of humanity within those that Freud would classify as our “Neighbours,” or the Others who deviate from us socially, economically, morally, or theologically. When the blood is dried and the gore is compartmentalized and filed away in our desensitized, short-term memory banks, we can ponder “how far would you go to hurt them back?” Would it be justified, or just emotionally satisfying?
