Last Ones Out

Well, of course I sat down to watch "Last Ones Out" when I was given the chance, especially since it is a zombie movie. I hadn't heard about it prior to sitting down to watch it, so I didn't know what to expect.

Turns out that this movie wasn't anything extraordinary. Sure, it was filmed in Africa, but it is hardly the first zombie movie to be filmed there. Sadly, the storyline was so generic that it was hurting the movie. You knew exactly what would happen way before it did, and there were no surprises along the way as the monotonous script unfolded on the screen.

I like zombie movies where there is at least some gore and where the zombies walk about in a slow pace. Turns out that "Last Ones Out" wasn't that kind of zombie movie. The infected in this movie were running fast and displaying ability of being athletic as well, and the sound they were making was just abysmal. It fully and totally ruined the zombie experience for me. And the movie was actually nothing more than a group of people trying to get from point A to point B before the evacuation was finished.

The acting in the movie was adequate, though the actors and actresses had very little to work with in terms of a proper script and storyline from writer and director Howard Fyvie.

I managed to sit through the entire movie, but I wasn't overly impressed or particularly entertained. My rating of "Last Ones Out" is a mere four out of ten stars. And this is not a movie that I will be returning to watch a second time. Not an outstanding addition to the zombie cinema.

Well executed little zombie flick from South Africa. Production budget is low but still good enough, on top the actors do well. Last Ones Out provides nothing new but is a good one-timer for the aficionado of the zombie genre - the only thing, and that is sadly (in my opinion) a big fail - the movie got almost no gore effects at all. To spice the movie up with some gory stuff would have made the movie a greater pleasure to watch - I mean, who else as your typical zombie gorehound is gonna watch a movie like Last Ones Out!? Some good gore gore effects added I would rate 6.

As a previous reviewer pointed out this is not the first zombie movie to be made in Africa. However I do believe that The Dead was actually a British production, made in the continent. Anyway, same old plot of a zombie outbreak and a bunch of survivors. So old hat! Nothing of note here. I found the film dull, uninteresting, devoid of gore and the (token?) American character really annoying. Thankfully it is quite short.

I would have added a star if the tourist had died before the half-way mark. The movie wants him to have a redemption arc so bad, but in warping the film to cater to its worst character, it cheats all the other characters.

And another star if it hadn't saved all of its zombies for the last five minutes. There was no sense of threat for much of the film - just four people walking around in the woods for days (according to the overlay text), apparently without food, water or shelter, one having had his appendix cut out with a broken bottle, and nobody looked even a bit tired or septicemia-ish.

Waking up in a South African hospital, an American tourist scheduled to undergo an operation at the facility finds it overrun as part of a massive zombie epidemic in the country and must try to get several other survivors out of the area teeming with zombies in order to survive.

This one proved to be a rather decent zombie effort. One of it's better qualities is the rather startling setup to this one that offers up a pretty enjoyable overall setting for this one. With the setup of the hospital at the center for the zombie epidemic, there's a lot of fun to be had here in the first half getting to the outbreak showing the guy getting out of the hospital during surgery and trying to escape from the darkened building with the other survivors as the creatures are showing coming through the corridors of the building. With a minor pitstop on the way that provides some nice action as they start on their journey into the desert and forests of the area, this one picks up in the abandoned village where it features a little more action and urgency with the zombies becoming much of a prominent figure in the events that play out providing some solid tension and action in here. From the race to get the brother out of the infected-filled village to the arrival at the second town and the race to trap the creatures inside in order to escape without incident, these here are more than enough to give this enough to like of its flaws. The main issue holding this one back is the fact that there's not much happening throughout here. The idea of them wandering around in the forest with their relationship drama and the revelations that spring up which aren't in the slightest bit interesting to see play out at all here. Rather than focus on the zombies, these scenes of the group wandering through the trees and forested areas of the wilderness don't focus on anything remotely enjoyable and just cause this one to be quite bland and dull. A lot of this is due to the feeling like the film is unfinished, as if it's missing an entire act of the story to make things play out a little more coherently as there's nothing about this main couple at the start of the film and the way the events unfold manage to give this a really underdeveloped feeling where there's easily more story that could've been included in this since it's just completely simplistic. That also holds the zombie action to just a few sequences and none of those provide this with any kind of money gore-shot that's usually seen in the genre which really holds it back for those looking for that as well. In the end, it's watchable enough as these flaws hold it down.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Violence.