THE LAST RESORT Official Synopsis:
Paradise has gone to Hell.
When a group of five girlfriends heads for the tropics, they relax, hit the beach and step out for a night of partying. All is fun and games, until someone gets hurt. Robbed by their tour guide and left for dead, the girls take shelter in an old abandoned resort. This vacation might have been the time of their lives, but The Last Resort will most likely be the time of their deaths.
Our Take:
Sometimes you wonder where to start, and sometimes you wonder why you should.
Especially when there’s nothing here. The Last Resort seems to be a “tourists wander into a haunted environment and are confronted with their inner evil” story, but it’s so brief it’s hard to tell. It was an hour into the 75 minute running time before a) the "evil" kicked in and b) I finally got the lead characters names straight. Take out the padding of party scenes and shots of the desert and this is a 20 minute student film project expanded into a nearly full-length feature.
The movie dips into actual plot-clarifying exposition and action like a rock skipping across the pond. Brief and occasional bits of jumbled clichés bob up to move the action along; like a Mexican Fortune Teller warning of evil (who by the way, is really overly dressed. This may be the only Tijuana street vendor having "a Chico's kind of day.") or the possessed virgin suddenly becoming a wonton, murderous succubus. What little action there is gets crammed into the last half hour and it's hard to tell what's happened to who when you still can't hardly tell them apart. It's been done before, and you've seen it in longer, better, fuller films than this.
Special Features:
The Last Resort offers audio only in 5.1 Dolby Digital with Subtitles offered in English and Spanish. The following trailers are offered:
-The Last Resort, a red-band trailer that gives the impression this is Donkey Punch meets Texas Chainsaw with some implied monster action... like maybe this will be an EEEEVIL resort. Mostly off the mark.
-Frontier(s): The Unrated Director’s Cut, French Gorenography in the Hostel/Saw tradition…
-The Slaughter, Topless witches and The Evil Dead’s Necronomicon join forces to kill cannon fodder?
-advertisement for Break.com; a site that evidently collects web clips of people doing really stupid things, a la Jackass.
Widescreen presentation, this film is rated R.
Conclusion: The Last Resort isn't really a bad film. It's just barely a film. Everything's presented passably but don't let the alluring cover art fool you, as both the bikinis and beach are disposed of pretty quickly. Some passable cinematography and well executed flashes of minimalist gore are all you're getting here. There's a kernel of a much better movie here... or rather a bowl of unpopped kernels from pictures like Hostel, Killer Party, All Saint's Day, and others. Buyer beware.
Overall Picture:
Movie: D
Extra Features: D
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