Review of Final Girl (2015) by Crim — 16 Aug 2015

Oh, wow what a mess. There are several movies coming out with similar titles, and I hope this is the weakest one.

First, what genre was it aiming for? It's not a competent action thriller, and Abigail Breslin is not believable in that role at all - the good scenes she had were in the pretending phase and in the mind game she plays at the end. The fight scenes are very lame (possibly to hide that a stunt double was used for everything?) if the movie wanted a claim at the action genre. But maybe it wanted to be horror, as the term it used for the title. If so, it did not do any better; it didn't even have jump scares, the most basic brick cheap modern horror throws at the viewer's windows. There was no gore on screen, and the "deepest fears" were basic drama material (betrayal, mostly), so didn't seem intended to frighten.

Secondly, the revenge premise didn't work. This adult guy trains a young child to adolescence to... kill 17 year olds who were children when the guy's wife died? No explanation is provided. I'm all for taking your time, but the whole thing is too roundabout. And the revenge itself wasn't satisfying for me: except for the last man, everyone died too quickly.

The movie didn't convince that the girl was ready to hunt the killers; the hunting part was badly done, she didn't stalk them, was just shown finding them, and she had difficulty in all fights, despite her opponents drug-induced incapacitation. And the fact that she was shown taking the drug cocktail once didn't pay off when the drinking scene played out, because the way it was shown, she could have just pretended to drink. It seems like a nitpick, but all these details add up to a feeling that the movie is a collection of cliched scenes very poorly strung together.

Since what she showed in the movie in terms of skills did not warrant the years of training she got, why was the "recruited as a child" part even necessary? Why not have Abigail Breslin be recruited as a 14 year old, train for a few years, then take revenge on these guys? Bonus if the age of the killers is left out, so the pointless "but wait, they were children when she was recruited" mess is avoided.

Did this go through many rewrites and maybe a genre switch? It's one thing that would explain the horrible failure that came out - well, that or incompetence.