The Last Horror Movie

The Last Horror Movie begins by telling us that we've never seen horror as intense as this and that we're truly in for the ride of our lives. While some of the following murders are interesting, it completely fails to live up to such high self-regard.

It's a film within a film. Sort of. We begin by watching the REAL Last Horror movie, a direct-to-video slasher, with bad acting and wobbly sets, but after a few minutes (a cunning ploy to make what follows look good by comparison) some guy appears and claims to have taped over it with his own homemade horror (obviously he has a full editing suite somewhere in his house) and tells his own story of killing and torture.

The guy in question is Max Parry, a mild-mannered (to the point of being a bit camp) wedding planner, with a healthy relationship with his family, despite not being married himself. He's nice to his grandmother and good with the kids. No one would ever think him a psycho killer. But death and torture are his thang, indeed.

He's hired a homeless cameraman, who is Scottish (therefore by English law must be portrayed as a total mongo) to follow him around and capture his killings on film. Some of them are innocent and would really rather not be dead, but others are twats who deserve it. Max has no quibbles about killing old or young, man or woman, black or white. He never explains why he does it, but only justifies his actions by waffling on about twisted morals.

He claims the best part of horror movies is witnessing the kill, but most of his murders occur off camera, which is a bit of a rip-off. I'll admit, there is one cool scene in which a bully is immolated and another where he stabs a housewife, but I wanted more blood and perhaps some dismemberment. So much for being the last word in horror movies!

Another problem is that the convoluted narrative constantly conflicts with itself and could never actually add up in real life. Sad people like me notice this and it distracts from the point the film is trying to make. And the ending could only ever be scary if one is half-baked.

It's an ambitious project and I feel bad for rating it so poorly, but it's rather pretentious and just doesn't offer enough gruesomeness for the particularly bloodthirsty.

If this really is the last horror movie then it's a shame that the genre has to end on such a weak note.