The Last Matinee

The Last Matinee (Al Morir La Matinee) (2020)

Runtime: 88 minutes

Directed by: Maximiliano Contenti

Starring: Luciana Grasso, Julieta Spinelli, Franco Duran, Pedro Duarte, Ricardo Islas

From: An absurd number of production companies from Uruguay, Argentina and Mexico

Not even Uruguayan Brooke Shields can make me say that this was a good movie.

For awhile now I've known of this movie; after all, a retro horror flick inspired by giallos and the setting of the black gloved killer being an old movie theatre in 1993--of course that will get buzz from the likes of Bloody Disgusting-of course, they were the ones who helped release it in the United States. The fact that this comes from Uruguay of all countries and that made it perfect for this month. Unfortunately, this doesn't come close to being as awesome as Demons... and is not as good as many of the actual giallos I've viewed before.

In 1993 Montevideo, a black gloved killer who has a fixation on eyeballs (at least this was familiar w/ the genre) roams around a sparsely populated cinema showing some wacky movie about Frankenstein's monster-something directed IRL by the actor playing the killer. Sure, it has synth music and some colorful lights-as you'd expect from a retro genre example. Regrettably, most of the characters you see are loathsome A-holes... people I couldn't stand and did not even enjoy seeing suffer a gruesome demise. The lead girl-running the projector by herself on this night so that her ill father can receive a break-and a young boy are both cool. Other than that—it's full of irritating dumbasses who I quickly rejected and all the conversations between them (yes, while a movie's playing) made me really not like the first half.

The second half is more tolerable once the deaths start happening but it was not enough to save this for me. Of course, many people enjoyed this more than I did so YMMV. The gore did look nice at least; plus there were some laughs. One of the A-holes said that a random girl looked like Brooke Shields. Once you see her—eh, not quite. “ Uruguayan Sarah Hyland” is not the perfect comparison yet is at least more accurate. Also, someone receives “a hand shandy” over his blue jeans, leading to the expected messy result! That's for those that giggle over such things-like myself...