The Last Seven

I do not review as often as I should, but sometimes I feel like not doing so would mean a sleepless night. This is one of those nights.

The Last Seven is arguably the most poorly constructed, ill-fated, and hopeless attempt at making a movie I have ever seen outside those who recognize the feebleness of their movie and attempt to at least derive some kind of humor out of the film. It is so difficult for me to decide where to begin, because everything is wrong.

If that does not satisfy your curiosity, then let me hit the big three as I see them.

Number 1: Character development. Throughout the entire film, I was never given any reason to care about any of the characters outside of a boo-hoo flashback for someones missed birthday. I didn't care if they lived, if they died, or if they were forced to sit through their own horrible acting. I just didn't care about anything that was happening to them in the slightest, and it destroyed what little bit of plot development there was. And when I say little, I mean LITTLE.

Number 2: Wannabe artistic filming and editing. Out of place flashbacks, requiem-for-a-dream shortcut film sequences, long, drawn out scenes flip-flopping with super short, shaky camera snapshot progressions, third grade special effects, the "hitchcock" scare (attempt) and the list goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on. And. On.

Number 3: Worse than a M. Night Shyamalan twist ending. Nuff said.

The only thing decent about this movie was the scenery, abandoned cities always look awesome.

Don't waste your time, and don't make me tell you I told you so.

Reading the synopsis I had quite high hopes for this movie which was rapidly vanishing after the first 15 minutes which consisted of a bloke walking around the deserted streets of London's financial district. The long drawn out fifteen minutes of nothingness may impress someone who has never walked those same central London streets at Dawn on a Sunday morning but it doesn't really work for someone who has. I got the distinct impression the makers were trying to force a point here which went way past its premise of a deserted major City. The obviousness of it had me concerned for the rest of the movie.

Eventually our lone walker meets up with a trio, and they meet up with another trio and from there on in there's a lot of long drawn out scenes with intermittent quick flash editing that was intended to scare or intrigue. Im not really sure which but it didn't work.

While I have no doubt most of the seven cast have decent acting abilities, their performances were wooden. Mind you its not as if they had anything meaty to really bounce off so those performances were really down to the directors vision. You cant just put some people in front of a camera, give them some lines and hope for magic, particularly with a movie like this which should provoke the audiences senses. Then again a number of lines in the script are quite appalling, as if they were written by a secondary school drama club. But surely the director must have known those lines were just plain bad and could have done something about them.

For me the movie just plodded along until it came to a point where I was jeering for it to end. I had twigged on quite early their particular circumstance but how it lead to that I didn't know until the very end, so I do give the makers some points for that. In general though it was a rather garbled affair. Yes, it has a sense of continuity but it wasn't glued together very well. Its a movie that may very well have looked just smashing on paper, but hasn't translated so well to the screen.

As indie movies go it is by no means the worst, far from it. Its shot quite well, does have some atmosphere, and can keep you interested. If you haven't seen something in this genre before it may well keep you very interested. But I've seen a lot of these psychological horrors flicks and this one falls short of the mark. Compared to another one I reviewed 'The Broken' now there's a movie that really gets to you on a psychological level. One of the death scenes in that movie still makes me feel uncomfortable a year after watching it. There no gore, its just incredibly moving? or disturbing? I cant really describe what it is. If The Broken cant scare you nothing will.

I cant recommend the movie and I cant not recommend it. As I said, if you haven't seen this type of flick before you may very well enjoy it.

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!

I actually thought the opening scenes were brilliant and fascinating to watch, albeit he was wandering streets around Bank which are deserted for much of any weekend, but enough to reel you in & put yourself in the position, particularly on Tower Bridge.

But the film then achieves a feat, surely never done before but going rapidly downhill the moment other characters & words are introduced into the plot.

It never really goes anywhere after that, the opening 50 minutes felt more like the opening episode of The Last Train, Survivor, or a relatively low budget TV mini series, when you realise there's only 30 minutes left and the film hasn't really started.

It then all gets even sillier, even more unrealistic and uninterested characters, you've never cared one iota for disappear with the help of over the top editing and flashbacks.

You can't help wondering why not one of them, ever got into a car or on a bike and rode off somewhere, instead of walking for 10 minutes, then stopping to rest for a few hours.

Worth watching for the first 15 minutes, then you're better off making up your own film from then - with the likelihood it'll end up better.

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.