Ostatni dom po lewej stronie

2.5* rather. This film’s biggest problem was my expectations of radical and raw horror, the kind that would be unbearable for people of a weaker nature. What I got instead was some sort of harsher crime-drama that is deliberately lightened-up in every other scene. On paper, the behaviour of the victims, the killers and the parents may look credible, but most of the performances are so terrible that the characters have hardly any effect on the viewer (and it could have been very impressive if at least the parents transmitted sadness, despair or rage). The comedy relief by the two incompetent cops is something I wish I hadn’t seen, it’s hard to imagine anything more out of place in a film like this. (07.08.2008)

Does a parent have the right to execute their child’s murderer? This is a topic for extensive discussion and a subject for a serious film (see Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring). The problem here is that director Wes Craven and producer Sean S. Cunningham didn’t want to make a serious film. Instead, they mix sexual humiliation and shocking violence with happy hippie music and the comical performances of half-witted small-town cops. And though they interestingly demolish the stylistic clichés of films of the flower-child era, they drown their work in the mire of cheap provocation with their amateurish filmmaking. (05.10.2003)