Screenwriter Ashley James Louis and director Naveen A. Chathapuram don’t do anything special with the plot of The Last Victim, but they do afford a lot of atmosphere and credence to a fairly standard set-up, which gets the filmmakers most of the way there. There are two stories at play in the film, which eventually merges them during a bloody climax. The first involves a series of brutal killings investigated by a grizzled sheriff and his deputy. The second follows an unassuming witness to one element of the crime, forcing them to go on the run. In case that sounds derivative of a certain film directed by Ethan and Joel Coen, be assured that this is more homage than a rip-off.
The difference is in the details. Sheriff Hickey (Ron Perlman) and Deputy Gaboon (Camille Legg) are hot on the trail of ruthless crime boss Jake (Ralph Ineson, deliciously leaning into his barely convincing Southern United States accent). Jake ordered a series of violent murders in retribution for a betrayal, but the killers were a little too sloppy at the crime scene, leaving puddles of blood and half a human finger behind.
On the other side of the country, Susan (Ali Larter), a professional anthropologist with severe OCD, and her husband Richard (Tahmoh Pinikett), are planning a romantic getaway at precisely the same time that Jake’s operation begins to crumble. The lovebirds and the killers happen to be in the same forest when the criminals are performing certain cover-up procedures, and Richard, in the wrong place at the wrong time, is not long for this world. Yet Susan, hyperventilating but inhumanly determined, proves herself far more prepared and capable than anyone on Jake’s crew might have anticipated.
With its stock characters and familiar tropes, this is all fairly typical for a movie of this nature, and Chathapuram offers only the most minimal surprises, such as a truly effective twist involving a secondary character who seemed to be observing from the background. Mostly, the movie is an exercise in atmosphere, with the director and cinematographer Lukasz Pruchnik capturing everything either at golden hour or in the stark heat of the day, and performances add credibility to the well-worn template. This is pulpy, primal material, and the actors know how to play it straight, how to play desperate or (if playing the villains) menacing, and generally how to service this material without pulling the attention away from others in the cast.
One regards The Last Victim with a general appreciation for the stripped-down nature of the divided plot and the cleanly structured way that its pieces merge with the arrival of that insane twist. But that’s about all the enthusiasm one can muster for this genre exercise. Here is a movie that nearly gets by on its simplicity, only to reveal that it’s all too simple.
Photo courtesy of Decal
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