The Last Showing Review (Film, 2014) #31DaysofHorror
content warning: gore, sexual assault (implied)
A disgruntled former projectionist sets up an elaborate plan for revenge after being pushed out of his job by the advent of digital projection. He will make his own “realistic” horror film that matches the demands of the modern audience. The stars are an unwilling couple on a midnight movie date he cast from watching the security footage at the theater.
The Last Showing is a meta-horror film. The characters set up the story by talking about the whys and hows of cinemas, audience behavior, and the structure of horror films. The projectionist’s plan is even written out on a series of notecards like a storyboard.
There are layers of film styles occurring within each other to play with this level of genre self-reflection. The Last Showing is a beautifully shot and stylized horror film in the style of the late 80s/early 90s bigger budget studio picture. The projectionist’s film is a found footage horror film happening live, shot on a cheap digital camcorder and grainy security footage. The midnight screening in the feature is Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes 2, which very much has that same kind of DIY sensibility as the rise of those all digital found footage style horrors in the ‘00s and ‘10s.
The Last Showing is about cycles in horror storytelling. There are trends that reemerge every few years like clockwork in horror. The cycles shift between zombie, vampire, slasher, haunted house, and high concept horror films in the United States. Theaters will be inundated by slashers until we hit a wall of zombie films, then a high concept indie will make waves and shift us somewhere strange, but then vampires or haunted houses will come back until slashers reign supreme. Evil children films are perennial favorites and witches, werewolves, and miscellaneous monsters tend to be spread a little further apart.
Every shift in the popular horror leads to criticism about what horror is. If the popular films are gory, horror films are a grotesque source of entertainment for terrible people. If the popular films are ghost stories, everything about horror is old fashioned and not scary at all. If the popular films are monster movies, horror only cares about the look of a film and not the story. Horror, as a genre, is only just starting to be treated with a fundamental level of respect in the past few years as generations of newer academics and critics grew up in an era where video rentals, then home purchases, then streaming services made thousands of forgotten films available to reevaluate.
In The Last Showing, the projectionist and the young woman know the value of the genre. The manager of the movie theater and the young man do not. The projectionist intentionally targets the young woman to force the young man to gain some perspective on how even the most well-worn tropes of horror can be terrifying and feel brand new if you actually pay a little attention to the context of the story. The manager is targeted to learn a thing or two about the value of traditional film practices. Only the projectionist knows what should be happening, another level of meaning as a traditional analog projectionist literally controls the narrative in the theater with the reel changes.
Everyone in the story is fighting for the survival of what they care for in life. The projectionist wants to prove the worth of the old ways, with years of knowledge and a clear understanding of the structure of horror. The young woman wants her boyfriend to understand that films are meant to be fun and that her perspective on life is just as valid as his. The young man wants to save his girlfriend, forcing him to confront a reality redefined by the rules of horror films that he had no interest in actually paying attention to. The manager just wants the business to run and people to not complain.
The Last Showing is a fascinating and beautiful horror film. The film feels grand and expansive even after it quickly turns into a story of four characters trapped in a movie theater. The twists on a classic horror structure created by combining layers of simultaneous narratives keeps this fresh and unpredictable the whole way through.
The Last Showing is streaming on Shudder.
