One of the most notorious movies of the 1970s, Wes Craven's much reviled Last House on the Left (1972) was the product of an America traumatized by Altamont, the Manson murders and the Vietnam war, whose carnage was a staple of the nightly news. The remake, produced by Craven and producer Sean Cunningham (Friday the 13th), may be just as timely -- can you say Abu Ghraib, suspension of civil liberties and collateral damage from the Iraq War? -- but the new team behind the camera has systematically toned down the story's visceral bite.

Pretty, 17-year-old Mari Collingwood (Sara Paxton), a competitive high school swimmer, is looking forward to spending the summer with her parents, Dr. Jack Collingwood (Tony Goldwyn) and his wife, Emma (Monica Potter), at the family's charming lakeside house. While her benevolent parents unpack, Mari wheedles permission to take the car so she can meet up with summer-pal Paige (Martha MacIsaac), who works at the local general store.

As an ominous storm darkens the horizon, Mari reluctantly accompanies the impetuous Paige to a nearby no-tell motel to score some dope from scruffy cutie Justin (Spencer Treat Clark), who just blew into town with his family. Unfortunately, Justin's dad is the sociopathic Krug (Garret Dillahunt of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), whose brother (Aaron Paul of Breaking Bad) and deeply damaged girlfriend (Riki Lindhome), just busted him out of a prison transport, killing two cops in the process. When Krug and company return unexpectedly, the girls' fates are sealed: The fugitives need Mari's car, and with their faces all over the newspapers, they can't let Justin's little friends go free.

After being graphically abused and terrorized, Paige and Mari make an unsuccessful break for freedom that ends in Paige's gruesome death and the virginal Mari's brutal rape by Krug, who shoots her in the back as she makes a last, desperate effort to swim to safety. As the storm rages, the killers make for the nearest shelter, which just happens to be the Collingwood house. Mari's parents are all good-neighbor hospitality, but what will happen when they realize they're sheltering the thugs who brutalized their cherished daughter?

Anyone who doesn't know what happens isn't the audience for the new Last House, that audience being thrill-seekers familiar with the original film's reputation but unwilling to watch old movies (anything that pre-dates Jaws), and horror buffs tantalized by the trailers -- which give away the whole story, right down to the last nasty detail. You can hardly blame Craven for sanctioning a remake of his Gimme Shelter-era variation on Ingmar Bergman's Academy Award-winning The Virgin Spring. The same institutionalized violence that horrified him in the early '70s is back in the news and he can't have been happy to see 2005's coarse, Chaos rip off Last House virtually scene for scene.

But the new Last House fails to walk the original film's highly uncomfortable line between unrelenting bleakness and the dispassionate recognition that both families -- Krug's feral brood and the nice, middle class Collingwoods -- run the same gamut of emotions, from intense loyalty to explosive violence and astonishment at the things of which they're capable. Craven's original didn't ask viewers to feel sorry for Krug and his band of alienated outsiders anymore than it encouraged them to cheer when the Collingwoods methodically got medieval on their asses. It just demanded that they recognize the ugly truth that under the right circumstances, anyone is capable of anything.

Take that ambivalence away and what's left is a formulaic exercise in righteous revenge: Decent, regular folks set aside their scruples for the higher purpose of giving "bad people" (to quote the movie's juvenile tagline) the comeuppance they richly deserve. Last House on the Left was never meant to be a thrill ride and the original enraged and sickened audiences, in part because it makes clear that eye-for-an-eye vengeance just leaves everyone blind. The remake sends them home cheering, secure in the knowledge that the cosmic debt has been settled and all's right again with the world.

For an alternate view of The Last House on the Left, check out James Rocchi's review in What to See.