Last Girl Standing is a very slow burner; most of the film will leave you wondering if you’re really watching a horror, as you’re just watching a hysteric girl struggle with small-talk at parties. Occasionally, the boredom is interrupted by a vivid, nightmarish hallucination, but these moments are brief and only serve as minor interruptions in an otherwise dull affair. The lead character in question, Camryn (Akasha Villalobos) is difficult to sympathise with, as her actual character is given little development beyond being crazy. It would have been interesting to see little bits of who she might have been before the massacre shine through over the course of the film, but she simply gets less crazy and more boring.
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
The ending is completely predictable, but it is actually executed very well and is impactful despite being so obvious. Though it seems that Camryn has finally recovered from her hallucinations of the masked murderer, she ends up violently murdering her love interest in a confused and hysteric state.
Convinced that ‘The Hunter’ has managed to somehow escape death, Camryn ends up chasing down and butchering her friends under the belief they are the murderer. Her rampage is eventually stopped thanks to a few well timed bullets. It’s a shame this part of the film isn’t longer, as it’s easily the best part and almost makes up for the very slow first two acts.
Last Girl Standing definitely suffers from some pacing issues and a somewhat weak lead character, but it’s an interesting take on the slasher horror nonetheless. Definitely worth checking out even just for the last 20 minutes.
Review: Last Girl Standing
By Ross Wildish - 25th March 2016
The slasher horror genre is full of derivative, generic Friday the 13th rip-offs;
a lot of which somehow get sequels. There are always the carefree, promiscuous teenagers, going on some summer adventure to a cabin in the woods, and the masked, seemingly super-human maniac that chases them down one-by-one. Normally there are one or two survivors, who miraculously manage to outwit their psychopathic attacker and survive to see another day.
It’s a tried and tested blueprint for slasher films that was popularised with the likes of Jason Voorhees, Leatherface and Michael Myers through the 70s and 80s. But very rarely do these stories bother to explore the real psychological impact the survivors go through after these events. Sometimes you have a sequel that follows a returning character, but often the story follows the same pattern. Last Girl Standing instead explores a young girl and survivor of such a massacre dealing with the aftermath of such a traumatic event.
