Sometimes a movie comes out that’s bad. It’s bad, painful even, but you forget about it by the year’s end. But then there comes a bad movie that legitimately pisses you off. It aggravates you just to think about it. You want to run to the rooftops and scream of your hatred. That’s the stuff the winds up on “Worst of” lists at the end of the year. But, then there’s a movie, a special kind of movie, that is SO UNGODLY BAD that you don’t even know what to make of it. It’s so bad, but becomes good by being so bad. It’s this fucking enigma of a movie that makes you want to gouge your fucking eyes out, but somehow you can’t look away. You are amazed by just how bad it gets. The Room is an example of that. It’s something that doesn’t happen often, it’s a very rare occurrence. Well boys and girls, here’s another one to add to that short list: Final Girl
Let me see if I can come up with a clear synopsis:
Veronica (Abigail Breslin) has been trained from a very young age to be a weapon, an assassin. She’s trained by William (Wes Bentley), the two have a sort of Hit-Girl and Big Daddy from Kick-Ass thing going on. Although in this particular case, the two are not related and may even have feelings for each other. Elsewhere, a local gang of psychopaths lead by Jameson (Alexander Ludwig) have a ritual of getting together and nabbing a random blond girl to hunt and kill in the woods, The Most Dangerous Game style. Veronica weeds her way into this hunt so she can turn the tables on the hunters.
40 seconds. I clocked it. 40-fucking-seconds. That’s how long it took for me to go “Wow, this fucking sucks”. I don’t even know where to begin with this movie. First off, I deserve some sort of prize or reward for coming up with a synopsis, because this movie is not only aimless, it just makes no fucking sense. NOTHING IN THIS MOVIE IS EXPLAINED. For instance, it’s never explained how Wes Bentley obtained this girl to turn into a psycho killer, nor is it explained why he wants to do that in the first place. But then at points it seems like he’s training her specifically to kill these hunter guys, but that doesn’t make sense. But then how does she even know about these guys? There’s something with some potion that makes you see your deepest fears, why is that even a part of this whole plan? This film is just a bunch of questions that never get answered.
One of the weirdest things about this film that stood out to me right from the beginning is the stilted dialogue and the wooden delivery by these actors. I know that this cast can act, I’ve seen them do great stuff before, so I have to blame director Tyler Shields who just seems to have no idea what the fuck he’s doing. “Awkward” is the word that I’d use. Every single line delivery, action, interaction just feels awkward and stilted. It lends to the “stagey” feel that the director tries to get across, but it just falls flat and is pretty embarrassing to watch. It doesn’t help that screenwriter Adam Prince apparently has no idea how people actually talk in real life. These people talk and act like no one I’ve ever seen before. I understand that these characters are supposed to be weird and crazy, but the dialogue is laughably stupid and straight-up atrocious every single frame. No bullshit, there’s not a single good line of dialogue in this movie, nor is there any good delivery. Just zero.
Another very weird issue here is the lighting. The entire movie seems like they had no lighting kit/crew to shoot with, so they used one big spotlight for every single scene. As I said before, it feels stagey and constantly took me out of the movie. Even if you’re someone who doesn’t pick apart movies like I do and typically doesn’t notice a films lighting, there’s no way you can miss it. Every single scene is so weird looking because of this giant spotlight that they shine down on the actors. It’s just so fucking bizarre.
Another technical aspect of this film that fails is the filming/editing on the action. The third act of this film finds Veronica picking off the psychos one-by-one out in the woods, each having their own little action scene, and it’s so obvious that this director has no idea how to film action, or even that the editor knew how to put one together. It’s choppy and all close-up, shaky cam. I’m pretty sure that none of the actors had a stunt double, so to make up for that they had to film all crazy to make something out of it, but they actually made nothing out of it. Each action scene is so amateurishly slapped together. If you’re going to do action, know what you’re doing. Hell, if you’re going to do anything, know what you’re doing. Nobody here did, that’s for sure.
This is honestly just such a bizarre experience. The movie is so unbearably bad, but goddamn this movie is hysterical. It’s a movie that you should steer far clear of, but I have to kind of recommend it just because it’s so fucking inept and horrendous, you can’t believe that someone paid for it and put it together. It’s awkward, dumb, incoherent, but hysterically bad. Because it’s so entertaining, I almost feel like I need to give it points, but I can’t do it. As much as I love this movie, I hate it just as much. I tried so hard to find one single thing about this that worked, but there’s nothing. Not one thing about this movie works. This is easily one of the best bad movies ever made, but it’s also one of the flat-out shittiest movies I’ve ever seen. It’s an insane sight to behold.
This review honestly does not do the film justice. It’s so hard for me to explain just why this movie sucks SO FUCKING BADLY. You have to see it to believe it.
Rating: 0/10
Final Girl is currently streaming on Netflix
