The Last Horror Movie (2004)

the audience applauded

Simply A Masterpiece

Good concept, poorly executed.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Like a lot of horror fans, I'm always interested in seeing bloody, over-the-top shenanigans and naked girls. The Last Horror Movie--which I saw a while ago and was super excited to find out it's going to be playing on Troma Comcast On-Demand this month (!!!)--definitely delivers the gore. However, it's also very intelligent film that stands on its own next to films like Peeping Tom and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. The writing is as sharp as it is self-reflexive, and the cinema verite cinematography adds depth and realism to the film.For fans and non-fans of the genre, The Last Horror Movie is a brilliant yet bloody exploration of the mind of a serial killer. Interested? Watch it on Troma Comcast On-Demand! I'll be right there with you.

Major disappointment! I thought it was going to be a typical horror movie but with a bit of originality. I was wrong. The originality that the movie was trying to achieve was over-done and therefore didn't make any impression on me. In the end it's just another low budget movie, done in a reality-TV kinda way, similar to "Blair-witch-Project" in terms of VERY little action and WAY too much talking. It feels like it was not edited at all. Surely that makes it seem more real, but we all know it's not. It also wasn't entertaining. I honestly had to stop myself from falling asleep several times...it was awfully boring and a waste of time. If you expect to see a scary movie, it's just not it.

I've been a fan of horror movies and thrillers since I was a child. I'd like to think I know a little about the way they work, having studied film at university (not that that makes me an expert, mind you). In the post-modern world we live in now, there is a glut of cinema verite in our televisual entertainment, what with the plethora of reality TV shows and so on. Horror movies seem to have moved in a similar direction in some ways: witness The Blair Witch Project, Rec, Cloverfield etc. There is also an emphasis on taking the horror to its "logical" extreme by exposing the viewer to total violence and sadistic torture - note for instance the current trend of torture porn with films like Hostel and Saw. All these movies aim to place us in the action and make it seem more "real".Taking this theme of placing-the-viewer-in-reality, the writer of The Last Horror Movie would like to think he is being desperately clever, but the script in this film is so patronising and transparent it can't even pass as "art". The lead actor is just plain awful - his performance is incredibly affected and bland, with almost no nuance. Others give good performances however, especially the Assistant.The serial killer constantly looks at the camera intensely and asks us "insightful" questions like "why are you still watching?" and "don't you want to see what happened?" and so on. Utterly tedious. We KNOW why we watch horror - we don't need to be lectured about it. Horror performs a sort of ritual of exorcism for our daily lives - it enables us to live vicariously through the fictional suffering of others, knowing we would never do it ourselves (and hoping that it will never happen to us). This sort of thematic material was explored with so much more finesse and artfulness in Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer (which is truly shocking in its coldness), Pasolini's incredible Salo (the end sequence where we are looking through binoculars at soundless torture scenes), Belgium's excellent "Man Bites Dog" (which was ahead of its time) and even less graphic movies like Hitchcock's Rear Window and the excellent "Peeping Tom" from the early 60s. Voyeurism being explored in film is nothing new. The premise of The Last Horror Movie therefore appears incredibly naive to me, with nothing new to say. The murders are rather silly, and the whole "I followed you from the video store" line just tacky. It's one thing to take the tack of "the viewer is complicit in this murder" theme, it's quite another to shove it down their throats.

I saw this film last night and i really like it. For me is just a unique horror film with a very particular style. i know that a lot of people put here that this film was just a copy of a Belgian film: Man Bites Dog (1992) but i can tell you that is not, just the fact that both are about a film of a serial killer but both have diferents points and different style. So like Quentin Tarantino said one time: "i take ideas from other great films just like every other great filmmaker", because i'm pretty sure that Julian Richards (director) watch Man Bites Dog and he love it.Well about the plot and the cast:The way the film starts with a scene of the original film that you supposedly buy and later Max (Kevin Howarth) start to talk with you is nothing but great. The plot is about Max (who works as a wedding video grapher), a psycho who wants to make an "interesting" real horror film about his own murderers. The plot is a little repetitive but you also can see the relation of Max with his assistant, his grandma, sister, his nephews and some of his friends. Is great because Max doesn't look like a psycho and because you and his assistant are the unique persons who knows about Max's horror film.And finally the idea of the tape is nothing but great.So for me this is an excellent horror film with a lot of great ideas that make it unique.The Cast is just great, Kevin Howart (Max) is really a great actor and for the low budget the visual part of the film is amazing.About the DVD: I buy recent the DVD of this excellent film for a very good price: $3.4, this film is not very famous in Mexico so i think that the unique reason because this film was release in DVD was that have the "Fangoria presents", for me was great because it was a really good price and i could watch this film. The region 4 DVD have some good bonus material like delete scenes , a documentary about the film and interviews with the director, the producer and with Kevin Howart. Excellent for my collection.PS: the Spanish title for this film is "Diario De Un Psicopata" that in English means "Diary of a Psychopath"