Film

The Last House on the Left

Name: The Last House on the Left
Genre: Crime, Thriller, Horror, Drama
Released: 2009
Cast: Tony Goldwyn, Monica Potter, Sara Paxton, Garret Dillahunt, Aaron Paul

Other titles called The Last House on the Left: the 1972 film.

Slasher
Crime
Very dark

A home-invasion thriller about a family's methodical, unflinching revenge after their daughter is brutalized. Denis Villeneuve's 2009 remake trades the original's raw exploitation for cold precision and genuine dread. It's vicious and smartly made—for viewers who can stomach extreme violence in service of something honest about rage and justice.

TMDb rating

3.3

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a lean, grimly efficient revenge thriller that treats its violence as a brutal, unflinching consequence rather than a spectacle, and you already know the 1972 original's bleak shape.

Skip it if you find extreme sexual and physical violence hard to sit through, since the film makes almost no effort to soften what it shows and it lingers on its cruelty.

What it asks of you: It runs about nineteen minutes shy of two hours and mostly stays tense and unrelenting, so you need to be ready to endure long stretches of dread with little relief.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Straw Dogs1971

The original template for civilised people pushed to savagery. Peckinpah's masterpiece about a meek mathematician who becomes lethal when his home is invaded; the moral queasiness never settles.

But Graphic sexual violence and a protagonist you won't root for make this difficult. It's also methodically slow, which tests patience.

Eden Lake2008

A couple's confrontation with local thugs in the South African wilderness turns into a descent through layers of cruelty and class rage. Intelligent, brutal, and genuinely upsetting.

But The violence is arbitrary and relentless. You spend the film knowing there's no justice coming, only more harm.

Green Room2016

A band trapped in a neo-Nazi venue with a corpse. Jeremy Saulnier's tense, visceral thriller treats brutality as consequence rather than spectacle. Claustrophobic and excellent.

But It's a siege film with zero mercy. The nihilism is complete and the gore is unflinching.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Last House on the Left

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Revenge2017

Both are about families and individuals enacting revenge with hands-on clarity. Both ask: what are you willing to become?

A woman alone in the desert hunts the men who assaulted her. Coralie Fargeat's film is formally stunning—colour, composition, and editing in service of pure vengeance fantasy. Operatic and gorgeous in its cruelty.

But It's a rape-revenge film with extreme violence and nudity. The glamorisation of vengeance might feel obscene to some, and it prioritizes style over grounding.

Mystic River2003

Clint Eastwood's masterpiece about three childhood friends dealing with a child's murder. Haunted, layered, and morally complex—it understands grief and the desire for vengeance.

But It's long, deliberately paced, and deliberately bleak. Some will find it slow; others will find the ending unbearable.

Wake in Fright1971

An Australian schoolteacher's descent into madness and violence in the outback. Raw, queasy, with an animal cruelty that makes your skin crawl. Unpolished and unmissable.

But It looks grimy by design, the acting is uneven, and the animal scenes are genuine. It's deliberately ugly and hard to watch.

You Were Never Really Here2017

Joaquin Phoenix as a damaged man cleaning up human trafficking. Lynne Ramsay's film is abstract, fractured, and brutally empathetic. Stunning use of sound and image to convey trauma.

But It's surreal and fragmented rather than narrative. The subject matter is harrowing, and the style asks a lot of the viewer.

Irreversible2002

Gaspar Noé's notorious film told backwards—you experience the horror of violence without understanding why yet. A technical and conceptual achievement about memory, trauma, and time.

But This is genuinely difficult. The violence is graphic, the subject matter is sexual, and the film seems designed to exhaust you emotionally.

Killing Zoe1993

A bank robbery in Paris spirals into a nightmare of ultraviolence and betrayal. Roger Avary's film has style to burn and an early 90s fever-dream quality. Unpredictable and stylish.

But It's aggressively self-conscious, the plot is secondary, and the aesthetic choices won't land for everyone. It feels dated.

The Descent2005

Three women trapped in a cave system with something hunting them. British horror that builds dread through claustrophobia and the unknown. Tense and inventive.

But It relies on jump scares, and the creature design is underdeveloped. The twist many found unsatisfying, and the ending is grim.

Funny Games1997

Same DNA of family under siege, but Haneke is making an essay about the genre itself. The Last House is the thing Funny Games is critiquing.

Michael Haneke's Austrian original: home invasion as formal deconstruction. Two young men terrorize a family with arbitrary cruelty while the camera watches impassively. It's not a thriller; it's about why we watch thrillers.

But Haneke withholds catharsis intentionally. The violence feels pointless, the pacing is glacial, and there's no payoff. It's an attack on the viewer.

Audition2000

Both explore violence erupting from family intimacy and desire. Both show violence as a language when words fail, though Miike makes it fever-dream while Last House keeps it literal.

Takashi Miike's horror-romance: a widower holds fake auditions to find love and discovers something far stranger. It begins as a gentle drama, then fractures into gorgeous body horror. A masterclass in tonal rupture.

But The extreme violence arrives suddenly and has no justification beyond nightmare logic. It's visually repellent in parts, and the Japanese cultural specificity is complete.