Final Girl : La Dernière Proie

24 March 2016. It wasn't Abigail Breslin's fault I assume, but the script just didn't allow her to really shine in this movie. Her martial arts, well her kick-boxing skills or taking apart and putting together a weapon just weren't on par for as long as she trained for example as La Femme Nikita (1990), Elektra (2005), Hannah (2011) Daisy and Violet (2011), or Miss Meadows (2014). There was too much light in the darkened forest which was too unrealistic. As for the hallucination horror scenes, they weren't on par with such classics as The Blair Witch Project (1999), The Cell (2000), Silent Hill (2006), Black Death (2010). As a thriller, the movie did have a consistently and understandable plot, with some wry humor, and decent acting, and an atmosphere in this nevertheless predicable movie. But it could have been better.

This movie had quite a lot of familiar names for me and with all those names should have been better. It gets let down by the script and the casting of the lead Abigail Breslin.

The rest of the actors do on the whole a pretty good job and overlooking Abigail Breslin's obvious miscasting this was an entertaining movie to watch. Just don't expect too much going in.

Wes Bentley, Cameron Bright, Alexander Ludwig and Francesca Eastwood are all actors I have seen before and their performances while good are let down by the unpolished script dialogue.

The movie is quite short at 78 minutes before the credits and the story is quite good, but for one glaring plot hole.

I gave this a 5.5 rounded up to a 6/10, which is better than the current average on here, it could have easily been an 8 with some work on the script and a more appropriate lead actress.

Final Girl is basically putting the Hit-Girl trope to the slasher genre, which can be a pretty cool concept. The film's style is some sort of a fancy old-school mystery film, highlighting shadows and silhouettes through creaking walls, cafeterias and streets. Visually appealing stuff, rather enjoyed for being effectively overly campy for its low budget. But the story itself is just downright silly and even worse, meaningless. The movie sets up a little girl training to beat up dangerous men, but it instead lead us to a number of strange events, which results to such polarizing schlock.

Even for its shoddiness, the weird style could still be admired for being way too campy. The story centers on a secret organization that hires vigilantes, and everything else about them is a huge mystery. We only see two characters in their dark shadowy headquarters; it's either for the sake of being extremely minimal, or just really underdeveloped. But the important thing is, they're hiring a young girl to fight off their targets. In spite of training and even raising her in this cold- blooded environment, the main character, Veronica, still doesn't seem like she's as strong or as unfeeling as she is supposed to be. It makes everyone wonder what exactly did she train throughout her childhood. She's not given much of an arc either. The film just presumes that she is not competent enough at some points. It can be a useful good to bring some suspense, but instead, she is given an incredible dose of deus ex machina in this "daring mission" that would easily take down her targets.

While it makes the whole mission a lot weirder, all we see is just some amateurish looking acid trip that is supposed to represent their fear, but looks more totally random than disturbing. The fighting is hidden behind the vague shadows and the on screen blood is very reserved. All the slasher/gory fun is replaced with artsy pretentiousness. And for some reason, that can also be one of the benefits of the film. In a typical mindset, the experience may just be some terribly shot mindless violence on screen. Not saying that this approach is anything fresh or superior at all, it's just pretty rare that it manages to do something a little different. It brings some tongue-in-cheek characters, blanketing their shadows into some exteriors with lighting fetishes (the headlights of the gang's car is super strong enough to shine the entire forest). The movie brings some flavor, but it didn't gloss over enough about the fact how pointless this story all was. The acting is fine, they're basically as campy as the cinematography.

Final Girl is a cool looking film with a pretty ridiculous story that lacks severe subtext. The movie may have painted a lot of interesting shadows through its darkness which makes it effectively campy as hell, add some symmetry that somewhat turn buildings into dollhouses, make headlights spotlighting every hallucination, and characters chew the scenery because it's more intimidating that way, but then it's all just pretty images. It all lacks grotesque and gore, or even more important: meaning. While it's reasonably to get fascinated by a typical B-movie's decision have such obsession with silhouettes and lights, the story just doesn't make any sense in the end.

As I'm reading, the director Tyler Shields is a photographer and this is his directorial debut.

Well, it shows in both counts. This movie (?) has a direction of photography with extremely bright lights and hard shadows projected on the walls which give a dreamy nightmare-ish feel to the movie. And it is most certainly a "debut" because the director isn't sure about what is doing and how to reach out to the audience.

Abigail Breslin is a girl meant to lure a gang of teenage sociopaths who are killing dozens of young girls in their small community. In a trend that is revived nowadays (summer 2015) the girl is a hardened martial arts specialist trained by an unknown man who lost his wife and daughter. (There is a trend showing tough kids again. Just saw Big Game, Hardly Lethal etc.).

Anyway in terms of entertainment this movie fails to deliver. It may capture you in the beginning. To see the young girl get back to those boys, but the actual scenes are uninteresting.

This looks more like an experiment or a low budget student project than an actual movie. And of course the ending has nothing more to deliver.

Overall: Avoid it. Waste of time.

I saw the trailer to this and it appealed to me. I like both the main actors. They have proved they are good. But this film doesn't take long before your realise it is a little cheap. Questionable dialogue and poor cinematography.

The story is neither here or there. I have seen worse. But the way it is executed just leaves you wondering if this was a student project. The build up to the climax is clumsy and made me chuckle a few times. Abigail is a fine actress but this film did nothing to help her. She just wasn't convincing in this role. Especially if I compare next to the film: Hannah.

So in summary; Weak story, poor production, bad cinematography and failed direction that lets the actors down. Not recommended.