Youth in Revolt, Last House on the Left (2009)

A couple of movies in the past week, one of which I watched on the spur of the moment and the other one I watched because I finally worked up the nerve to do so. I'll leave it up to you to decide which was which.

I saw a great graphic online that was kind of a build our own Michael Cera movie. You choose a few elements, move down the flowchart and choose some more Cera-cliches and you have yourself a movie. The terrible thing is they would all make decent movies. Youth in Revolt was decent, but nothing more. Perhaps I'm getting too old and can't relate. Sheeni is the object of desire in this movie and quite frankly, she's a bitch. I was almost expecting to find out at the end of the movie that she was the figment of Nick's imagination, as she was his perfect fantasy girl.

Nick's alter-ego was a great way to advance the plot, make the movie interesting and to give Cera a little more to do. Also, did they have to call him Nick? Wasn't he Nick in Infinite Playlist? Some of the other characters were memorable but nothing to write home about; I would give this movie a 5.5 out of 10.

The other is The Last House on the Left, which I honestly thought was a horror film, but was more of a thriller without supernatural elements. Not sure why I would be scared to watch either one: this was a thriller that made you hang on until the end to see some real nasty vengeance take hold. And you have to enjoy it, right? I'm going to have to go ahead and say revenge flicks seem to be picking up more steam in the past few years. And not just simple revenge, but revenge of the nature where Liam Neeson can spend two hours busting up bad guys in the most horrific way possible and we eat it up and want more. We don't even care if his daughter is ok...indeed, we know she is because Liam is in charge here.

So, I spent most of Last House waiting for the revenge to go down but it did take a while and I'm sure it's a better movie for it. Disturbing scenes abound and the bad guys get what they deserve...I think? Spoiler alert, of course, but the last guy's head explodes in a microwave. What? Nothing more to add to this really: it was a disposable film that was entertaining and did what it needed to do. It did not leave a bad taste but will not be very memorable.