Last House on the Left

Replacing the earlier movie's more depraved sequences with sustained tension and truly unnerving editing, the director proves adept at managing mayhem in cramped spaces.

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

The wheels fall off toward the end but, until that point, Illiadis does an excellent job of generating and maintaining an intense sense of dread.

Look at the performances. They're surprisingly good, and I especially admired the work of Monica Potter and Tony Goldwyn as the parents of one of two girls who go walking in the woods.

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

Like the current hit "Taken," Last House 2009 packs a vicarious jolt that might feel cathartic to certain moviegoers.

This new House tries to sustain a grave, heavy sense of threat. It fails, through its villainy.

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

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.

A shockingly mundane disappointment taken on its own and a deeply misguided refraction of the original.