Photo courtesy of McClatchy Tribune

Rarely do horror films bring me to tears. I will cringe, maybe, and definitely scream, but never cry. This has got to be a first, but “The Last House on the Leftâ€Â is just too raw and intense not to elicit such strong emotion.

This remake of Wes Craven̢۪s 1972 rape-revenge shocker starts out simply enough, as Reese Witherspoon lookalike Mari (Sara Paxton) and her parents (Tony Goldwyn and Monica Potter) head up to their summer home in the woods, unaware that a small but sadistic clan of killers is on the run after a double homicide.

You just know there̢۪s bound to be trouble when Mari and her friend Paige (Martha MacIsaac) follow quiet cutie Justin (Spencer Treat Clark) back to his motel to try out his weed.

From the moment they set foot in that motel room, the girls̢۪ fates are sealed. What ensues can only be described as a rollercoaster ride of sickening, mindless brutality as the teens are beaten, stabbed, raped and shot at, just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The sheer dread and cruelty of the first half play out in much the same fashion as Craven̢۪s original, even down to several of the camera angles, but this is all just a set-up for the bloodshed to come.

When a thunderstorm strands the killers at the home of Mari̢۪s worried parents, they are led to believe they̢۪ve gotten away with another double murder. Little do they know that Mom and Pops have cooked up something else besides dinner.

Revenge has never been quite so sweet, nor so bloody as Mari̢۪s folks pick off the killers one by one in a series of their own grisly assaults, using an array of ordinary household appliances (including a garbage disposal and microwave) to dispatch with a creativity surpassing even that of the original.

Unlike its fellow remake, the utterly pathetic “Friday the 13th,â€Â “The Last House on the Leftâ€Â goes above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to fleshing out its villains and keeping me on the edge of my seat with heart-stopping tension and well-timed scares.

This is grindhouse cinema at its most gritty and disturbing, peppered with heartbreaking moments, as when a bruised and battered Mari cradles her bleeding friend as she dies.

Because when the villains are not given a mask to hide behind, the havoc they wreak is all the more deeply felt and all the more real.