Source: Rogue PicturesIf bad people hurt someone you love, how far would you go to hurt them back?
Masters of suspense WES CRAVEN (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream trilogy)and SEAN CUNNINGHAM (Friday the 13th, House) revisit the landmark movie that launched Craven’s directing career and influenced decades of horror films to follow: The Last House on the Left. Bringing one of the most notorious thrillers of all time to a new generation, they produce the story that explores how far two ordinary people will go to exact revenge on the sociopaths who harmed their child.
The night she arrives at the remote Collingwood lake house, Mari (SARA PAXTON, Aquamarine) and her friend Paige (MARTHA MACISAAC, Superbad) are kidnapped by psychopathic prison escapee Krug (GARRET DILLAHUNT, No Country for Old Men) and his crew—deranged girlfriend Sadie (RIKI LINDHOME, Changeling), sadistic brother Francis (AARON PAUL, television’s Breaking Bad) and powerless son Justin (SPENCER TREAT CLARK, Gladiator).
Terrified and left for dead, Mari’s only hope for survival is to make it back to parents John and Emma (TONY GOLDWYN, The Last Samurai, and MONICA POTTER, Saw). Unfortunately, her attackers unknowingly seek shelter at the one place she could be safe. And when Mari’s family learns the horrifying story, they will make
three strangers curse the day they came to the last house on the left.
The contemporary reimagining is helmed by director DENNIS ILIADIS, whose recent film Hardcore won acclaim and found controversy for its depiction of teenage prostitution in modern-day Greece. Producing alongside Craven and Cunningham is Craven’s longtime production partner MARIANNE MADDALENA (Scream trilogy, Red Eye). JONATHAN CRAVEN (The Hills Have Eyes II) and CODY ZWIEG (The Hills
Have Eyes II) serve as co-producers, and RAY HABOUSH (Primal) executive produces.
To create this nightmarish vision of a family’s fight for survival, Iliadis and the producers have assembled a select group of behind-the-camera talents, including scriptwriters ADAM ALLECA (upcoming Standoff) and CARL ELLSWORTH (Disturbia), director of photography SHARONE MEIR (Mean Creek), production designer JOHNNY BREEDT (Hotel Rwanda), editor PETER MCNULTY (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), visual effects supervisor JAMISON GOEI (Twilight), composer JOHN MURPHY (28 Weeks Later) and Emmy Award-winning costume designer JANIE BRYANT (television’s Mad Men).
With a career spanning more than three decades, Wes Craven has become a cultural phenomenon in film and television. He reinvented the horror genre in 1984 with the classic A Nightmare on Elm Street, which he wrote and directed, and in the next decade he deconstructed the genre again with the successful Scream trilogy. These two franchises have earned nearly one billion dollars and serve as a demonstration of his profound understanding of the often unconscious fears roiling in the human psyche.
But Craven’s success in probing the roots of terror began in 1972 with his first film, the landmark shocker The Last House on the Left. The film was produced by fellow horror master Sean Cunningham, who went on to launch a juggernaut franchise of his own with his monumentally successful Friday the 13th.
In the early ’70s, Vietnam raged as American college students protested the war. Millions were disillusioned by the battle carnage filling their television screens each evening. Too, citizens saw injustices within their own borders. Young people were challenging status quo approaches to hot-button issues such as civil, women’s and gay rights. Mirroring this revolutionary attitude, a new generation of filmmakers expanded the boundaries of conventional cinema.
Among them were Craven and Cunningham, who quietly commenced work on a film that would change the course of modern thrillers. "Last House was very much a product of its era," offers Craven. "It was a time when all the rules were out the window, when everybody was trying to break the hold of censorship. We were all very antiestablishment at that time. The Vietnam War was going on, and the most powerful footage we saw was in actual documentary films of the war. In Last House, we set out to show violence the way we thought it really was and to show the dark underbelly of the Hollywood genre film. We consciously took all the B-movie conventions and stood them on their heads."
A university literature professor before he switched careers, Craven took inspiration for the project from the Ingmar Bergman film Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring), which is actually based upon the medieval Swedish ballad "Töres dotter i Wänge" ("Töre’s Daughter in Vänge"). At the time, Last House was a drastic departure from the vapid mad-scientist monster movies prevalent in the late 1960s and early ’70s.
The two filmmakers weren’t sure if their low-budget film filled with controversial subject matter would attract an audience. Indeed, they were simply interested in the exercise of making a feature film. "When Sean and I made The Last House on the Left, our attitude was that we were going to do this tiny little film and it was only going to be shown in two or three theaters," remembers Craven. "Nobody was ever going to see it, and nobody was ever going to know we did it. So, we essentially said, ‘We’re going to show things that people have never seen before on a movie screen. We’ll pull out all the stops and just do whatever the hell we want.’"
The original version of Last House was, as Cunningham describes, "a guerilla film." It was made with a skeleton crew of 15 members and a budget of just under $100,000. In order to save money, the movie was mostly filmed in houses belonging to the crew’s families in Westport, Connecticut. "It was just one of those things," remembers Cunningham, "where somebody says, ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea…let’s make a movie! You write; I’ll produce; you direct. I’ll make sandwiches, and I’ll take sound.’ It was very primitive, student-level filmmaking. It was like doing a high school play where everyone works around the clock for no other reason than to do the play. We were literally kids running around with a camera."
With such humble origins, little did anyone suspect the film would become a boxoffice sensation and revolutionize modern thrillers. Of the opening weekend, Craven recalls, "I called to check with Sean and see what was happening with the movie. He said, ‘Are you sitting down?’ A moment later he said, ‘It’s a hit; it’s a smash; they are lined up around the block to see it.’" After a successful first run, the controversial film went on to play for years at college campuses and midnight screenings, where it became rite-of-passage viewing for young horror buffs.
In compliment to its commercial success, Chicago Sun Times film critic Roger Ebert championed the film. The young reviewer called Last House "a tough, bitter little sleeper of a movie that’s about four times as good as you’d expect…one of those rare, unheralded movies that succeeds on a commercial level and still achieves a great deal more."
Within the film industry, modern-day "splat pack" directors such as Alexandre Aja and Eli Roth credit Last House with being extremely influential on their own aesthetics. To reimagine Craven and Cunningham’s masterpiece, they would welcome to their exclusive club a new member…a young Greek director named Dennis Iliadis.
Flash forward 30-plus years. Intrigued by the astonishing success of such horror remakes as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Craven’s own The Hills Have Eyes, the producing partners pondered revisiting The Last House on the Left. Craven offers: "Because the original had been produced on such a minuscule budget, there were many aspects of the story I simply couldn’t afford to explore. Fortunately, the new version has a much bigger budget, so we were able to greatly expand the production’s scope and take more time and care in shooting."
In order to reintroduce this classic to contemporary audiences, Craven and team began to look for a rising young director to bring a new perspective for the story told 37 years later. It would require a visual innovator—someone with not only a dark imagination but also a talent capable of revisiting the action, gallows humor and terror of the landmark film. Better yet, he needed to integrate the elements into a distinct, new experience.
Over the course of a year, the team and Rogue Pictures considered nearly 100 different directors for the position. The project’s co-producer Cody Zwieg was impressed after he saw Greek director Dennis Iliadis’ film Hardcore, the controversial story of four teenage prostitutes in modern-day Athens. After viewing the film, he encouraged Cunningham, Craven and Craven’s longtime producing partner Marianne Maddalena to see it. His producers were equally impressed by Hardcore and its provocative, fresh approach to the world’s oldest profession. "We all agreed it was brilliant," says Maddalena.
Hardcore top-lined Variety’s Critics’ Choice awards as one of the best films by new European directors for 2005, and the film also won the prestigious German Independence Award. Moreover, the independently produced, low-budget film had exemplary production values, showing that Iliadis was a savvy filmmaker who could be highly creative within budgetary constraints.
"We knew the remake would only work if we could find someone who could create strong characters while handling the more extreme moments," explains Zwieg. "Hardcore wasn’t a genre or a horror film but showed completely believable characters in horrific, realistic situations. Many directors could handle the surface elements, the blood and shock moments of Last House, but Dennis proved that he could do it all without exploiting his characters and their situations."
Iliadis jumped at the chance to work with Craven on Last House and make the movie his American debut. "I’ve seen all of Wes’ films and loved them," he states."This film is based on a very archetypal story and primal story, which is a great foundation. I wanted to keep all the shock value and the power of Wes’ film and develop the story in my own way."
With Hardcore, Iliadis had elicited performances of depth and beauty, while working with mostly nonprofessional actors for a long rehearsal. He would bring those learned lessons to Last House. "You must discover the characters with the actors," says the director. "We rehearsed for a month-and-a-half on my first film. We got to a place where we could shoot very difficult scenes very quickly, because we had developed the characters in rehearsal. All the extreme scenes came out naturally after that."
Using Craven’s original screenplay as the template, the production team assigned writer Adam Alleca and then Carl Ellsworth with the task of updating and fine-tuning Last House. Ellsworth, who worked with Craven on Red Eye, relished the opportunity to revisit his director’s inaugural property. "This is a classic good-triumphing-over-evil movie. I wanted to thriller-ize it. At the end of the day, it’s about normal everyday people in extraordinary circumstances, and it doesn’t get anymore extreme than this."
Iliadis welcomed the challenge of interweaving visceral thrills with complex characters. "I want this to be a film that grabs you and never lets you go," he says. "At the same time, it should make us think a bit about human nature. Who is civilized, who is uncivilized? Who is violent, who is normal? Our film grabs you by the throat and tellsus some things about human nature. We are an interesting species."
A large part of the thrill of Last House is its extraordinary visual energy. For Iliadis, forging a sharp look and visceral feeling of mounting tension for the film was a priority, which is why he recruited cinematographer Sharone Meir for the project. Meir’s masterful work on Mean Creek created the almost unbearable nervousness that the director wanted for this project.
Iliadis notes that the two often enjoyed spirited debates during the shooting of the film. He laughs, "Well, we are two Mediterraneans, so that makes it very colorful. We’re like a strange married couple. We argue a lot, and we have interesting conversations. It’s always loud, but in the end, it’s a very loving relationship."
Wes Craven had nothing but praise for the cinematography of the 2009 version that Iliadis created with Meir. "Meir captured the spirit of the original and captured the performances beautifully," compliments the filmmaker. "He shot one of the most powerful moments I can recall in a recent film: Mari heading for the water, following the assault scene. There is so much humanity and grace in that shot; it’s astonishing."
Working alongside KNB was Twilight and The Hills Have Eyes and its sequel’s innovative visual effects supervisor, Jamison Goei. From bullet holes puncturing a tranquil lake to heads frying in a microwave, Goei and his team of high-tech artists seamlessly crafted visual effects shots for the film.
There was one aspect of filmmaking about which Goei and Iliadis were always in agreement: inserts would be kept to a bare minimum. "I hate inserts," states the director. "I wanted almost everything to be right there before the camera. I hate cutting to something that is out of context just to get the gore right. I like to incorporate it into the action, which is more difficult but more effective. The gore and the balance happen during the take. It feels more organic and more shocking rather than doing the fancy inserts."
See Also: The Women Who Would Dare Venture Inside The Last House On The Left
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a little bit scary movie ;)
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