The Last House on the Left (2009) on Netflix
Mari Collingwood, a teenage competitive swimmer, is on vacation with her parents at their lake house. In town she and her friend Paige meet Justin, whose family is on the run.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.5/10109,365 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes43%
Trailer
Plot summary
Officers are transporting the killer Krug Stillo to a maximum security prison when a pickup truck broadsides their car; both officers are killed and Krug goes free. Dr. John Collingwood, his wife Emma and their seventeen-year-old daughter Mari drive to the family's lake house for a vacation. Mari, a competitive swimmer, borrows the car and goes into town to see her friend Paige, who works the cash register at a store. There they meet Justin, a teenager passing through, who invites them to his motel room to smoke marijuana. Justin's father Krug, his uncle Francis and Sadie walk in, and the gang leaves town with the two girls in the car.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Last House on the Left (2009)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Craven, who wrote and directed the original film, was interested to see what kind of film could be made on a larger budget, as the limited funds on the original forced him to remove scenes he had wanted to film to tell a complete story.
SPOILER
One of the changes Ellsworth made was keeping Mari alive, as the character is found dead in the original film. Ellsworth believes keeping Mari alive when her parents find her adds to the suspense, because there is now a “ticking clock” for the parents to get their daughter to hospital.SPOILER
Ellsworth also changed the fate of Krug's son Justin, attempting to give the audience a better “sense of hope”. Craven points out that early on he suggested that Krug have a son who commits suicide, but found it more interesting to see “this strange Romeo and Juliet thing happening” between Justin and Mari.- Garret Dillahunt took inspiration from the man who killed Gianni Versace, recalling the brutality with which he murdered a man just for his car; an FBI profiler had noted that this type of rage is typically directed toward someone the perpetrator knows.
- The MPAA ratings board ordered multiple cuts to the film to achieve an R rating. The biggest setback involved the rape scene: in the original cut it was at least one minute longer, but the board forced the scene to be trimmed if the filmmakers wanted an R rating.
- For the ending of the film, Iliadis and the creative team chose to include the song “Dirge” by psychedelic rock band Death in Vegas. Iliadis was hoping to find something that was both “ironic” and “innocent” at the same time, given the events in the film that would precede its usage.
- The producers brought in a medical technician to provide insight, based on his job experience witnessing people's deaths, and lend realism to the actors' portrayals.
