If nothing else, you’ve got to hand it to Lionsgate direct-to-DVD horror releases: they deliver exactly what they promise. Unlike many major Hollywood releases, which can promise everything from historical accuracy to wall-to-wall action only to deliver Pearl Harbor, everything that happens in films like The Last Resort can essentially be guessed by looking at the cover. In fact, it all but tells you how the whole thing turns out in the synopsis on the back. “Their vacation might have been the time of their lives, but The Last Resort will most likely be the time of their death.” I’m not making this up.
Five best friends Sophia (America Olivo), Amber (Paulie Rojas), Kathleen (Marissa Tait), Beth (Sita Young) and Jessica (Arianne Zuker) head down to Mexico for Kathleen’s bachelorette party. Because it’s the rules in these kinds of situation, one of them, Sophia, breaks off from the rest of the group to have sex with this guy Rob (Nick Ballard) that she meets down there. Before she can rejoin with them, they run off on a less-than-official looking tour, only to be robbed and left in the desert to die. While wandering around the desert, they come across an abandoned resort and, as you might have guessed, there’s something really bad there, and Sophia is forced to try to come and save them.
I don’t even really know how to explain what’s there, save that it’s more than a little reminiscent of the film Shivers. Basically, there was some evil guy there a long time ago who wanted to make this a place of ‘freedom’, which appears to be Lionsgate shorthand for ‘getting naked and cannibalizing one another’. Because that’s exactly what starts happening. And I’d start complaining about how stupid that is if I thought there was any point to it, but there isn’t. And in every instance the writing, direction, and acting prove themselves just about equal to the central concept that they’re working with (although it might have been nice to have a performance of brilliant campiness along the lines of Manos: Hands of Fate’s Torgo, just to spice things up a little bit).
Really, the only point at which you can start hurtling legitimate concerns at films like this is when you start placing them against the pantheon of well-regarded crap that low-budget horror has produced. It’s hard to say that films like The Brain That Wouldn’t Die or Robot Monster are any better made than something like this, but it’s rather to say that there’s an appeal to films like that this just doesn’t have. Where did this break in nonsense occur? When did low-budget horror lose its charm? My only guess is that it started some time in the eighties, when slasher films were just getting popular. Slowly but surely, the central characters in these films turned from mad scientists and nosey reporters to horny teenagers, who simply don’t have the necessary vocabulary for the kind of outrageous dialogue we had come to expect from luminaries of the genre such as Ed Wood. Also, there’s the fact that horror and science fiction have long been the sanctuary of geeks, nerds, and other social miscreants, and it doesn’t help to populate films like this with the kind of beer-pong playing douchebags that everyone hates in real life (although that’s probably necessary if we’re going enjoy seeing them hacked to pieces). It’s not hard to see how the charm left, and The Last Resort, as a result, doesn’t have any. Certainly not enough to forgive its considerable faults in other areas.
By the way, that lady from the cover makes no appearance in the final film. In case you were wondering.
DVD Bonus Features
The DVD also has optional English and Spanish subtitles, as well as a trailer gallery.
"The Last Resort" is on sale August 11, 2009 and is rated R. Horror. Directed by Brandon Nutt. Written by Nate Bozen, Nathan Oliver, Martina Papinchak. Starring America Olivo, Arianne Zuker, Marissa Tait, Nick Ballard, Paulie Rojas, Sita Young.
