The Last Matinee‘s Seedy Slasher Spills Guts and Is Sharper than It Seems
Ah, the theater: A place where strangers gather under one roof, seat themselves in front of a massive screen and let moving pictures carry them away for a couple of hours while a leering maniac stalks and slaughters them, one by one, with knives and rebar. And you thought the ticket prices were murder! Joke’s on you, plus all the poor schmucks getting dead in Maxi Contenti’s The Last Matinee, an ode to giallos and—maybe—a cautionary tale about going to the movies when unseen danger lurks all around, killing off audience members before their fellow moviegoers realize it.
If Contenti and screenwriter Manuel Facal intentionally wrapped their slasher around a COVID-19 metaphor, they hid it well: Finding that message takes no heavy lifting, true, but Contenti operates on vibes. The Last Matinee isn’t plotty or talky. It’s lurid and focused on atmosphere. There’s no explanation for the unfolding narrative. A killer (Ricardo Islas), referred to as “Asesino comeojos” in the credits, drives to a battered old movie theater in Montevideo, patiently waits for the last showing of the evening (2011’s Frankenstein: Day of the Beast, which Islas directed) to start, then quietly goes from row to row introducing the smattering of attendees to their bloody deaths.
The Last Matinee starts off hinting at a broader story about its final girl, Ana (Luciana Grasso), the daughter of projectionist and theater owner Tomas (Franco Duran), a workaholic and inveterate smoker. Left to his own devices, Tomas would work himself to death. Ana forces him out of the booth and into a cab, promising to man the projector for him—she’s watched him do it for years, she tells him, and knows what she’s doing. Tomas is lucky. He takes a hike out of the picture in the first 13 minutes and avoids the carnage. Once he’s gone, and once the film’s assembly of victims in waiting sit down for the feature presentation, the asesino gets crackin’ (and stabbin’ and impalin’).
And that’s the deal. Contenti and Facal write dialogue exchanges between the characters paired off with one another from the start, and no one at any point wonders aloud about the killer’s identity. There’s no space given for pretense. The setup is the setup, the meat and potatoes that horror fans watch the genre for in the first place, made with great care and terrific FX. Take that as you like.