Final Hour

I remember seeing this film when I was a kid and I remembered that it scared the sleep out of me and surely tributed to my current horror fetish. But over the years it seems to have vanished from everybody's minds, into that vast oblivion where only Danish horror films can go. Anyway, imagine my thrill when I happened to find the film on a crappy VHS in a just as crappy local videostore. I got it, went home, let it lay there on the kitchen table until day fell into darkness and further into night. You might call this over-the-top expectations or something, but I was a bit frustrated when the credits had rolled.

"Sidste time" comes off extremely ambitious in one sense and I can't really understand what the negative criticism, dismissing the film as a "standard" or "routine" slasher, because I have NEVER seen a film like "Sidste time". It has a fundamental difference towards other films and the closest thing I can compare it to is the odd and mysterious tone of Lucio Fulci's old masterpiece "The Beyond". While I understand the criticism in itself, yes we suffer from some seriously lame characters carrying out some equally lame dialogs while getting killed off one by one (again), I have a hard time making sense out of the critics missing the weirdness of the film. Because it's in the fundamental weirdness that "Sidste time" collects it's points. The film does start out as a standard piece, but pretty soon you realize that we have no idea what's going on. As if in an episode of Twilight Zone, the characters find themselves stuck in a parallel dimension... or is it the sadistic, blood thirsty TV-show that is a demonizing illusion? Just how much power is contained within the dice of the very satanic Mickey Holm? Or is it just a ghost story? Or are the kids going mad? We don't know, all we can do is ask ourselves the same thing as the film's Augusta, "Why is everything so strange?" It's a heartache to understand what a sensation this film COULD have been. Because as long as the film rely on it's spooky atmosphere and the horrific notion that anything can happen in this pseudo school of horror, it's one of the most haunting slashers I've seen, and probably the best (or is it "the only GOOD"?) Scandinavian horror film ever produced. But quite often this excitement is ruined by your average stupid screenplay of characters spontaneously running away and other unlikely, moronic things. Not to mention what I've already mentioned, that is to say lame and predictable dialogs.

We have good actors, we have a nice dash against media exploitation and we have a sensational engine of suspense being expanded too often. If we had a screenplay that could make the different elements of the film work better together (as it is now, it does a worse job than the kids in the film) and crunch in unpredictable turns of terror, we would have a sensational masterpiece of horror. I never asked for a new "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" or a fancy "Dawn of the Dead" with Ving Rhames. I'd donate MONEY, though, to see an understandable remake of "Sidste time". Because it could be marvelous.

PS Schmidt and Jürgensen should be given some credit though, since they were two Danes trying to wake the slasher genre to life a year before Wes Craven actually did it.

This is a very subjective telling of the time I saw this movie.

I was little. I guess somewhere between 7 and 9 years old. Me and my brother were alone, we were going to rent a movie. My brother rented two movies, one of the Puppetmaster-movies and this: Den Sidste Time.

I don't remember much from Puppetmaster (although I have seen them all later in life) but "Den Sidste Time" really made an impression on me.

I remember being really scared, because I thought it was sooo creepy. It was the scariest thing I had even seen. When I saw it later in life, I didn't find it that scary, but I still think this is a cool horror movie.

The coolest thing with this movie is the atmosphere. It's claustrophobic, intense and pretty creepy. It is not a typical slasher, there are elements here that are pretty bizarre. I wouldn't say supernatural, but certainly strange. (This was also a big reason why I found it so scary when I was little, the mystery of it)

I think this is a cool and different, creepy horror flick.

This is an excellent Danish horror movie. The writer Dennis is a genius and basically a Danish Stephen King. His great imagination and humour shines through in the twilight zone type of plot. People who say this is a routine slasher that is absolutely not true. The movie is filled with great philosophy in the dialogue. It is even political in many ways and pre-figures both Saw and uncensored news. The movie is totally excellent and people who say bad about it simply fails to appreciate the philosophy of the movie.

Seven pupils of a school are told to school by mail, regarding their failed behavior. They met in the biology classroom. Suddenly the door is shot, the curtains going down. On a TV, their failure is mention and they have to find out a riddle: "A murdering has happened in this school, find the murder!" After talking about a legend about a teacher, murdered by pupils in the biology classroom, they find a hanged and heavy wounded man. Also they found out, that the TV was not plugged in.

During this time, Mickey Holm, a talkmaster of the Reality-Show "Sidste Time" gets a facsimile from the school. He and his team are going to the school, to film what happens. He is glad, because until this time, he had no material for the evening show.

The pupils try to leave the school, but all doors, windows are closed, nobody can hear them. One by one is found murdered. While the TV is showing the "Sidste Time"-team on the school playground, later also INSIDE the school building and showing the murdered pupils, the scary children don´t see anything of the team, looking on the same playground.

Rough pictures and scary atmosphere are great parts of this danish movie, in good tradition of "Nattevagten" ( or "Nightwatch" ). A school as death trap with a maniac murder and a situation of no escape, no matter what they do. The pupils do not stand together, because of their very different personalities.

The movie is very confusing, especially at the end. Did not figure it out yet, but it is one of the most interesting part of this movie. Alse a great example for danish cinema.

Although I shouldn't really comment too much on a film I haven't seen in many years, I still want to recommend this film to fans of horror movies. I remember all too well when I saw this in the theatre that I was totally "creeped" out.

The plot, as I remember it, concerns some kids who stay late at their school. For some reason they are locked in and there's someone in the school with them, killing them off one by one.

I remember very well the final plot point, and it was a bit of a disappointment, but up until then the film completely had me hooked, scaring me quite a bit. I recommend horror fans try and locate this film, as I will definitely do.

Nowadays Hollywood is remaking Japanese horror movies that continually disappoint. Maybe, since they can't have an original idea to save their life, they should check out more Scandinavian thrillers for a breath of fresh air.