The Last Seven

I despair for the British horror film genre. I really do.

In the space of just a few weeks I've watched this and Dead Cert, two prime examples of films that had promising premises but totally ballsed it up with inept direction and editing, lousy dialogue and rounded off with some truly pathetic acting.

I grew up in the 60's and 70's watching delights such as The Abominable Dr Phibes, Dr Terror's House of Horrors, Asylum, From Beyond The Grave, Tales From The Crypt, Frightmare, House of Whipcord, Scream and Scream Again, Theatre of Blood and many more.

These films had real actors, decent scripts, filmmakers who knew and understood the genre, not fly-by-nights trying to make a quick buck by dolling out any old rubbish.

Apart from Severance I haven't seen a decent British horror film in ages, and if today's filmmakers keep serving up crap like The Last Seven then my despair looks set to continue.

The Last Seven is amateur night crap, avoid!

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

I could go to great pains to write a long, in depth review of The Last Seven, but it's hard to write much more about it other than my summary above. Right from the opening sequence, with one of the lead characters wondering around a deserted London shouting out for 'anybody!', just like in the aforementioned film, it just feels like such a pale imitation of it that it hurts. In fact, it's almost as if the director knew he was practically copying it scene for scene and just gave up bothering to tell any sort of decent story of his own. As such, it just goes through the motions of the post apocalyptic thriller genre, with the usual stereo-typical set up and characters, without firmly establishing the back story behind the majority of humanity being wiped out and making no sense. Most baffling is Danny Dyer's role as some sort of blood crazed zombie type character, probably the most mysterious thing about the whole uninspired mess. *

Artistically fantastic - a wow take of the streets of London post-weirdness not so sure it continues to engage every viewer beyond the first 5 minutes watch, but don't expect a Hollywood Blockbuster

Lets cut to the chase here, this is quite a bad film; in much the same way that Hitler was quite a naughty boy.

Its sole redeeming features are the initially interesting shots of London. After 10 minutes of nothing but however i found myself desperate for some actual drama and character interaction.

Not in this film you don't! Armed with a woefully clumpy and clichéd script, the actors manage the impressive task of actually worsening it in the delivery.

Philips chooses to adopt random unconvincing shouting as his tactic of choice, often cunningly contrasted with whispers, presumably to try and shake any remaining audience from the inevitable coma they will have slipped in to.

Meanwhile the usually dependable Hassan vainly tries to rough it and gritty up the tension a bit, only to realise he's inexplicably trapped in a film thats so soporific, it not only couldn't fight its way out of a paper bag, it would shatter every bone in its frail lifeless body upon the slightest hint of contact.

The only thing that actually piqued my interest (sadly for all the wrong reasons) was Mawson's turn as Henry. His ridiculous ham-fisted sloshing and bizarre facial extremes were only enhanced by his delivery of every line as if he were shortsighted and reading it off a cue card for the first (and hopefully last) time.

This is tripe that gives stomach lining a bad name. As a nation we supposedly produce the finest actors and writers in the world, so what are these gormless half-wits doing on the big screen gleefully kicking this festering equine corpse? Avoid this film, unless you are either related to someone associated with it, or suffering from insomnia.

Cynical maybe, but then so is a C- grade short stretched to a feature, with Danny Dyer hired to front it, whilst playing less of a prominent role than the girlfriend of its creator.

Lord have mercy.

this is by far one of the worst films i have ever see in the history of films. i once bought a £1 Kung Fu film from HMV that was of a better standard than this film. i actually felt bad for the actors and kept wanting to correct the incredibly poor acting! if you watch this you've only yourself to blame as i do for ignoring the previous bad comments from other reviewers.

to put it bluntly, this film is so bad that i had to join IMDb as a member just so i could warn people off from wasting there time... shame on the director for this one and for the script writers SHAME ON YOU!

i really need to get into story writing, because if this is the best these guys could do and it actually managed to make it even to DVD let alone the pictures, then anyone can call themselves a director/actor/script writer!