Ingmar Bergman is spinning in the last grave on the left…

What pisses me off about THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT is that nowhere do the filmmakers mention – not in advertising, not in screen credits and not even in the Special Features on the DVD – that this movie is ripped straight from Ingmar Bergman’s THE VIRGIN SPRING (1951, aka JUNGFRUKÄLLAN).

Instead, director Dennis Iliadis decides to give screen credit to Wes Craven, who created the “original” LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT in 1972: “Based on the story written and directed by Wes Craven.” No, it’s not. The story of villains who molest a young girl and then seek refuge unknowingly in the house of that girl’s parents was written by Ulla Isaksson. Craven rewrote the story to pander to American bloodthirstiness.

Bland Tony Goldwyn and blander Monica Potter are the parents. Sara Paxton is the virgin teen – so slim, smooth, innocent and sexy, only one thought crosses our minds: she just has to die. Martha MacIsaac (cutie Becca from SUPERBAD) is the pot-smoking teen friend.

Garret Dillahunt (looking like the sperm-child of Jason Patric, Rob Lowe and Dennis Miller) is the villain; his vaguely lesbian-goth chick, Riki Lindhome (who knows how to please viewing audiences by getting her cans out constantly); his teen son, Spencer Treat Clark (GLADIATOR, 2000), who is sickened by his father’s crimes and beaten for being so “unmanly.” Aaron Paul is Garret’s partner in crime.

Whereas Bergman’s film focused on the STORY, Iliadis’s film – like Craven’s before it – focuses on the GORY. Here, the parents of the molested child turn into the monsters they despise. In Bergman’s film, the father (Max von Sydow) dispatches the villains quickly and efficiently, like a god come to life, exacting justice; in Iliadis’s film, there’s mangling and bashing and stabbing and a claw hammer to the skull and microwaving someone’s head gratuitously – in effect, the parents become the “slashers,” an ironic twist on the teen-slaying genre.

In Bergman’s film, the father also kills the young kid in the gang of villains, who did not participate in the crime, but was an abettor for doing nothing to stop it. That was powerful stuff. With the gutless MPAA breathing down America’s neck, it is absolutely no surprise that young Spencer Treat Clark is spared here.

There seems to be no storyline in this movie, outside of Isaksson’s blatantly plagiarized premise. Isaksson’s story is altered by having the raped daughter somehow crawl back home, rather than her friend. And then a tenuous allusion to THE VIRGIN SPRING when the family realizes the quickest way to rush her to hospital is upriver by boat. But they can’t find the boat keys!

The script might have been just ten pages long with the amount of padding onscreen – the rape scene itself goes on and on for so long, it’s as if the director and editor just sat there touching themselves and letting it run. It’s not even tragic after a certain point – it’s just hot.

Further evidence that these filmmakers are just trying to gross us out: the father is a doctor; while he is putting stitches in a man’s nose, they have a blackout. The father takes a giant flashlight and – instead of shining it on the guy’s nose to finish his needle stroke – goes outside to fix the circuit breakers first, leaving the needle sticking half-through the nose. Some kind of doctor!

There is no characterization, no character arcs – the only throughline seems to be “trying to find the boat keys.”

This story opened deep, dark questions about the human condition: how far will you go to defend your loved ones?; how sweet can revenge be if you have to stoop to the level of the villains?; can you go through with taking a human life at all? And where the hell are those boat keys?! There is one scene where the father and mother exchange a glance that is laden with these unspoken conundrums, while they kill one of the villains… by mangling his hand in the sink and sticking a claw hammer in his head. Guess they figured the answers.

Then those questions get replaced by bigger ones, like “Where can I get psychiatric help?” as the father seems to slip into the Teen Slasher Movie world himself when we see him cutting open the ringleader’s back to sever his spinal column in order to paralyze him from the neck down, and then – while the ringleader is conscious – stick his head in a microwave and set it on high. Now that’s just plain wrong! Everyone knows the setting for human head is two minutes on ‘medium.’

It is a complicated, time-consuming procedure and we cannot quite tell chronologically when the father performs his insane little operation, but consider: if he did it BEFORE he rushed his raped daughter to the hospital, he is crazy; if he did it AFTER coming back from the hospital, he’s still crazy!

And the moral of the story is: Remember Where You Put The Boat Keys.

END

“Mmm, it all looks so good, I don’t know where to start first.”

To Die For.

It’s all about the story, innit?

SAW dives into its second act in its first minute: Two men in a subterranean TRAINSPOTTING bathroom, chained by their ankles to steel pipes at opposite ends of the room. A dead man lies in a pool of blood on the floor; in his hands, a gun and microcassette player. The men find cassettes in their pockets instructing them on how to escape their plight. One of them has to kill the other…

Jigpoff

Old-school indie film-making at its best, from director-writer James Wan and co-writer, Leigh Whannell. Though ever-gorier sequels (SAW II, III, IV, etc.) have turned the SAW franchise into generic gore-fests, the original SAW displays a depth to its cutting edges that raises it miles above the average bear-trap nipple-twister.

Through flashbacks, tape recordings, police investigations, we piece together the story that a psychopath named Jigsaw is forcing victims into impossible escape situations where, even if they survive, they will forever be scarred physically or psychologically. The last seconds of the movie reveal why Jigsaw’s motivation is to give people a new appreciation of life.

The two trapped men are Cary Elwes as Dr. Lawrence Gordon, and Leigh Whannell (the co-writer) as Adam. Lawrence figures out that the hacksaws supplied by Jigsaw are not to cut through their chains…

Amazing first-time direction and writing from Wan and Whannell, solid characters and primal screaming that rattles our ribcages, immerses us in every frustrating, impotent moment with the trapped characters, Elwes and Whannell pulling off some complicated emotions.

“Please, I’m begging you: don’t drop the signal again!”

Ken Leung does a great job with his detective role, but Danny Glover sleepwalks through his role as Leung’s partner. As they trail the killer, they uncover other fiendishly ingenious death traps: a man who must step across broken glass to work out the combination of a safe that contains the antidote to a poison he has ingested; a man who must crawl through razor wire to escape a cage, before the timer on the door locks him in forever; and of course, Shawnee Smith in the infamous reverse-bear-trap jaw-breaker.

The beauty in the simplicity of the story and the complexity of the tortures.

Has anyone told Monica Potter yet that she can’t act? She plays the doctor’s wife – unconvincingly. Luckily, the Story comes to the rescue, making up for the less-than-exemplary performances from Potter and Glover.

Pay very close attention for there are twists aplenty, the filmmakers intending a double-meaning with their title, as in: Doubt what you “saw,” not just the bladed tool to make people toss their plastic popcorn, which is exactly what may happen in the shocking, brutal climax – when Lawrence decides the only way to save his wife who can’t act… is to saw…

If that bone-shattering scene doesn’t wake up Danny Glover, nothing will.

END

Just Another Con.

Nice mullet, Nic!

His pooch hairdo effectively takes attention away from his massively-developed arms and Kirk-body-oiled man-chest.

A prisoner plane, the CON AIR of the title, transporting the biggest bunch of cliched criminals this side of Blockbuster Screenwriting 101, is overrun by said archetypes, led by an exceptionally-maladjusted Malkovich. Elvis comes to the rescue in the form of morose Nicolas Cage (one of the “good” convicts – no rape, murder or listening to Hansen music – therefore the anti-hero), who eventually commandeers the craft and lands it ostentatiously on the Vegas strip amidst traffic.

Written by Scott Rosenberg (with that Blockbuster Screenwriting Guide on his lap): the twisted mastermind (John Malkovich), the quiet serial killer (Steve Buscemi), the Badd Mexx (Danny Trejo), the black guy (Ving Rhames), the gigantor redneck (M.C. Gainey), the gopher (Dave Chappelle), the sick con who is automatically regarded as “wrongfully jailed” simply because he’s sick and a friend of the Anti-Hero (Mykelti Washington), even the obligatory fruity gay guy). Simon West directs with the Michael Bay Handbook on his lap.

The great John Cusack is completely wasted as a Marshall pursuing the hijacked plane and bland Monica Potter has outdone herself – in a career of vapid, unconvincing roles, this is surely the best and blandest in her reel, as Cage’s wife, awaiting him in desperate ambivalence with a daughter who looks like she was cast five minutes before cameras rolled.

Everyone pretends to be really Hard (even the winsome Dave Chappelle!) and there are lots and lots and lots and lots of pretty orange explosions and guys diving in slow motion while shooting big guns, but ultimately this movie is just another excuse to land Nicolas Cage in Las Vegas.

So bad I accidentally grew a mullet.

END