Sunday, August 2, 2015

Film Review: Final Girl (2015)

Copyright: Cinedigm
Part proxy renege fantasy, part action film, Final Girl is a type of story that tries to produce a smooth visual experience, but offers very low amounts of substance. If follows Veronica, a specially trained killing machine who is planted in the midst of a group of young psychopaths who kidnap girls and hunt them in the forest as their own wrapped form of entertainment.

Veronica enters the pack and begins killing the killers and hunting the hunters. Sadly, this is the entire Final Girl film. As a narrative, it looks more as a draft of a story than the story itself, because it appears to be lacking any divergence from a single line plot. Of course, like Mad Max: Road Fury clearly showed, there is nothing wrong with a one-liner films, but only if they have a strong delivery. 

Even though Final Girl starts off in a somewhat intriguing manner, showing the young Veronica being interviewed by her future handler (played by the always creepily intense Wes Bentley) the intrigue does not last. The director Tyler Shields soon tries some interesting shots where he places characters really close to a background surface like a wall and shines a strong spotlight on them.

But then, the movie movies to a forest, where the action includes some whiskey laced with a hallucinogenic drug. Here, Shields gives us some half-cocked tense moments and drug-induced trips which seem to belong in a more ambitious student film. The only semi-impressive thing from that point on are Abigail Breslin (as Veronica) and Alexander Ludwig as the leader of the psychopath pack. The end comes fast and leaves almost no impression at all.

Final Girl includes some interesting moments and Tyler Shields should not be written off. But, as a whole, the film is utterly forgettable, aside from the fact that it shows that Abigail Breslin is now all grown up.