Director: Tyler Shields
Production Company: Final Girl Productions, NGN Productions, Prospect Park
Country: USA
Year: 2015
I normally give a chance with teen horror. Some of it has the ability to surprise you, and as a fan of the original crop of slashers of the late 70s and early 80s, they’ve always got a soft spot in my cinematic heart. And when you put Abigail Breslin in the mix for one as well, there’s always the chance that the film will pull a blinder on you and be fairly entertaining at the very least.
But Final Girl will never be one of those surprisingly entertaining films. The plot centers on Breslin’s Veronica, a girl raised from a young age to be a killer, she’s tasked with killing a group of young men, who like to get together and hunt young women through the woods. There’s meant to be some big feminist statement in there, and the concept might allow for it. One might believe upon hearing the original concept that there was the intent for a big statement, and might have succeeded, but only if the eventual film wasn’t this absolutely empty, dull vacuum of an excuse for celluloid.
The writing by Adam Prince (and according to IMDb there were three others that wrote the story; how it took four people to put it together I have no idea) is uninspired and lifeless. The characters are empty shells, used as excuses to give big old slatherings of plot details (the little that there is), and be moved around the screen. The dialogue is so cringeworthy and bland that even Breslin’s talents aren’t enough to bring her character to life, full of asking really obvious questions and restating things we can clearly see. Her entire persona is to be the trainer femme fatale, apparently trained for this mission for many years, but who still gets winded and thrown by the people she’s hunting. Some training.
Speaking of which, what’s the whole shadowy organisation training her? Never explained, only one trainer is seen, so who cares? Why is she here to kill these useless, badly drawn, badly acted attempts at rich misogynists, and not being trained for James Bond’s job? Who cares, never explained. Who even is she as a person, a character? What is she like? What are her cares, her loves, her hates? Who cares, never explained. Everything is so still and bland and boring and badly drawn up that it’s only strength is on a concept which isn’t even original or indeed interesting at this point in cinematic history.
I think they sold this entire film off ‘Abigail Breslin in a red dress and an axe in her hand in the moonlight; teenage boys will cream their pants and buy the dvds just for that.’ Or they did it to try and get viewers that were going to watch The Final Girls, an interesting sendup of the classic summer camp slasher of Jason Vorhees fame and released in the same year, who might be confused and end up here instead of there. Those are the only two ways I can think that the whole production, producers, studio execs, financiers, the lot, would have put money into this waste of time of a film.
And note to cinematographer Gregory Middleton, a seasoned DOP by anyone’s standards: moonlight is subtle, even in good films. You’ve put your forest being bathed by football field floodlights. Find a happy medium, please, and there might be some kind of saving grace for the film.
Rating: 2/10
Review by Kieran Judge
Twitter: kjudgemental
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