[Film Review] The Last Matinee (2021)

If you’re a cinephile and old enough to remember a time before everyone had a cell phone, before streaming services took over as the go-to way to catch a movie, you probably have memories of those sleepy afternoons in the theater, catching a matinee of whatever was playing at the local cinema. 

In Maximiliano Contenti’s The Last Matinee (Al morir la matinée), viewers are transported to 1993 Montevideo, where the Uruguayan Spanish is heavily influenced by the Italian language. This is fitting for a film so heavily influenced by Dario Argento, an ode to the giallo slasher with the synth-laden music and bright contrast lighting to match. In fact, Argento posters can be seen several times in the background of many of the scenes; keep an eye out for those Easter eggs. 

We enter the Opera Cinema along with the killer on a cold, rainy day, where a handful of moviegoers have sought refuge from the rain at a matinee showing of Frankenstein: Day of the Beast. We meet Ana (Luciana Grasso), who scolds her elderly projectionist father for working a double shift at the theater and convinces him to take a cab home, leaving her to operate the projector. A couple on their first date take their seats in the audience, the woman quickly finding an excuse to leave early when it proves an awkward affair. A rag-tag group of tipsy teens sit in the balcony, laughing and disrupting the other theatergoers, while one pines for a girl he saw from afar on the bus. A small boy (who has been camping in the theater all day) sinks down in his seat to hide from the usher.. 

We hold no illusions as to what will happen next, the only questions that remain are how, when, and who?

The antagonist is played by Ricardo Islas who is, in another fun Easter egg, also the director of the film being played at the Opera Cinema. What makes Islas’ performance most unique is that he is undoubtedly just a man in a hood, his face never revealed a shocking thing, not a twist to leave the audience gasping. He is, from the very beginning, just a man with his own bizarre reasons for killing. And isn’t that just so much scarier? 

The Last Matinee perfectly achieves the nostalgia it seeks to elicit, doing for the giallo what Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censor did for the video nasty era: recreating the atmosphere of the time period to near-perfection. Cinematographer Benjamin Silva has mastered the art of the uncomfortable close-up. The brightly lit kills feel as strange, shocking, and out of place as they would in real life, the knife-work achingly slow in execution and increasingly brutal. The characters are relatable and realistic, their fear as palpable as their will to survive. 

While The Last Matinee doesn’t seek to tread new ground, it still manages to keep the kills feeling fresh, some of the imagery fit to linger in the mind. Regardless, the build of claustrophobic tension is sure to leave viewers wide-eyed. (That’s a pun, go watch the film!)

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