Mediocre Final Girl Lacks the Resources to Matter
Jameson (Alexander Ludwig), Danny (Logan Huffman), Shane (Cameron Bright) and Nelson (Reece Thompson) are not the nice, well-mannered, upstanding young men they appear to be. They are in fact anything but, the foursome secretly engaging in a murderous game where they charm teenage women into hanging out with them only to take them out into the wilderness and hunt them down as if they were wild animals. Dressed in their Sunday best, they hide behind trees, carry baseball bats and swing axes, their homicidal bloodlust so strong it’s almost as if they’re daring those in power to stop them from continuing their reign of terror.
PHOTO: Cinedigm
Enter Veronica (Abigail Breslin). The pint-sized blonde bombshell is the latest young woman to fall for the quartet’s collective charms, heading into the woods with the group under the apparent illusion they’re going to an outdoor fancy dress party. But she’s not the bubble-brained party doll they think she is, the enchanting teen turning this most dangerous game on its head as she proves to be far more difficult to hunt down and kill than the four friends surmised. No, Veronica is ready for them, making it her goal to enact revenge for those unable to do so for themselves.
Director Tyler Shields’ debut thriller Final Girl (not to be confused with the horror-comedy The Final Girls releasing a little later this year) isn’t a film wants to waste a lot of time talking about. It’s difficult to tell just how much talent the filmmaker does or does not have, the film more undone by lack of budget and technical components than it is anything else. It comes across as a made-for-TV student film circa 1987, almost as if the filmmaker’s greatest wish in life was to construct something that could have been a two-part episode of the syndicated “Tales from the Darkside” television series and nothing more than that.
Not that the script or the story, credited to four different writers, helps. An obvious twist on the timeless Richard Connell short story, originally published in Collier’s way back in January of 1924, the film doesn’t even bother to hide its central twist. The opening scene with a prepubescent Veronica (Gracyn Shinyei) making the acquaintance of the secretive William (Wes Bentley), while intriguing in and of itself, erases any chance the remainder of the narrative has to surprise, putting all the plot’s cards on the table in the first five minutes.
Still, Breslin is pretty good, as is Bentley as her lethal sensei teaching her the ins and outs of his clandestine assassination tango. Shields also manages to stage a couple of relatively nice fight sequences between Veronica and her assailants, most notably one involving a cackling doofus with that aforementioned axe and featuring imaginative playmates in googly-eyed animal costumes straight out of a theme park. There’s also a somewhat intriguing conversation between the heroine and a clueless teen, Jennifer (Emma Paetz), over a vanilla milkshake, coming close to achieving the Quentin Tarantino meets Rod Serling tone I can only assume the director was aiming for.
But it’s so hard to judge the film properly. Not only does it look dated, have the appearance of being made 20-plus years ago for two-in-the-morning syndicated television, it’s so thinly plotted and rudimentarily staged that none of the actors outside of Breslin have any chance whatsoever to make anything close to an indelible impression. The sets and the lighting are moderately terrible, tying cinematographer Gregory Middleton’s (Slither) hands to such an extent it’s almost amazing he’s able to create as many standout visual compositions as he does. Not knowing what the budget was, even for an independent production it had to be minuscule, handicapping all involved to such an extent it’s almost impressive things look as moderately professional as they ultimately do.
With all that in mind, it won’t catch anyone off-guard for me to then say that Final Girl is a fairly tedious enterprise and watching it start to finish is something of a major chore. It’s bad, but is so in ways that have more to do with forces arguably outside the filmmaker’s control so coming down hard on this is awfully difficult to do. That doesn’t mean I think anyone should watch it, mind you, I just think it’s best those that accidentally do are prepared for the obscene levels of mediocrity they’ll end up witnessing if they do so.
Film Rating: 1 (out of 4)
