Review #55 LAST SURVIVORS (2021, Drew Mylrea)

 

* * 

A man and his son's isolated existence deep in some snowy woods is threatened when the boy becomes curious about the outside world.   

Starring  Stephen Moyer, Drew Van Acker, Alicia Silverstone

Written by  Josh Janowicz   

Produced by  Shaun Sanghani, Sunil Perkash, Akaash Yadav, Michael Jefferson   

Duration  98 minutes   

You know when you see an actor who's new to you and they make such an impression that you always associate them with that performance? That’s how I feel about Stephen Moyer.

You see, back in 2001, I stumbled upon him in a two-part TV miniseries on Channel 4 called Men Only. The show caught my attention because the five friends at its centre all supported my beloved Crystal Palace Football Club. Moyer played a real sleazy bastard, who enjoyed taking clandestine photos of women during sex using an attachment on his Game Boy Color (!) And it’s been a struggle for me to picture Moyer as anything other than a misogynistic date-raper ever since.

I’m well aware that the vast majority of people have never even heard of this obscure acting credit, especially outside of the UK, even though it also starred Martin Freeman (Bilbo Baggins in THE HOBBIT) and Marc Warren (WANTED, GREEN STREET). But many more viewers will be familiar with him from another TV show, True Blood. I tried watching that one and couldn't get into it, but for a lot of people out there, they won’t be able to see Moyer pop up in something without picturing him in some kind of sexy vampire blood-letting scenario.

This must be why until recent years (like, before The Sopranos) movie stars shunned TV: you don’t want to get tied down to one character, to the point that no one can accept you playing anything else.

Alicia Silverstone has suffered a similar fate in her career – worse, in fact. And not from a TV role, but from a breakout movie: playing teen socialite Cher in CLUELESS (1995).

Back then, Silverstone probably thought her career was going well and that there was no way she would end up being known only for one role – and then she did BATMAN AND ROBIN, in 1997. A movie disaster-zone that derailed not only her career, but, to a higher or lesser degree, those of co-stars George Clooney, Chris O’Donnell, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Uma Thurman and Elle Macpherson, as well as director Joel Schumacher and the character of Batman on the silver screen.

Anyway, LAST SURVIVORS sees Moyer and Silverstone in the same project and trying yet again to embed a different memory of themselves in the viewer’s mind. They're co-starring in a ... oh joy, it’s another post-apocalyptic movie.

You can see why this type of flick appeals to the budget filmmaker. You don’t need a big cast; in fact, you can get away with having just a handful of characters moping about the place (unless you’re trying to do something like the MAD MAX sequels). You can get away with being extremely vague about what happened pre-apocalypse, so you don’t even have to properly think your scenario through. And settings can be places that it’s easy to hire outside of business hours and which you can readily make look in a vague state of abandon: schools or offices or even private homes – they just need to be left a little untidy to give the impression of being neglected for however long you want to imply. The more isolated the locations are, the better.

LAST SURVIVORS ticks every one of those boxes. It also demonstrates another tired trope with its opening music: a dreary, almost nursery rhyme-style ballad, like when they take a well-known song and slow it down and draw out its familiar melody for a trailer; or, if it’s a legacy sequel or new adaptation of ages-old IP, doing the same to that franchise’s well-known theme song (see: INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY, JURASSIC WORLD, SUPER MARIO BROS. THE MOVIE, etc).

And I wish LAST SURVIVORS got better from that first impression, but, alas ...

We open on a young man, outside in a snowy wilderness gathering animals from traps. He lives with his old man (Moyer) and it’s just the two of them in a rundown cabin, lighting fires, hunting, surviving. Bantering competitively about who can cut down the most trees in one day – hey, with no internet or PlayStation 5, you've gotta amuse yourself somehow.

They got guns. Don’t you worry about that – and not just for huntin’, neither. A few shots from afar while they’re bringing home the wood send Dad hurtling out to investigate, with an order for sonny to "shoot in the face" anyone who approaches their home.

Dad pops a wannabe intruder out in their yard, with son expressing his frustration about getting sentry duty rather than being allowed to pump a few rounds into something bigger than the usual rabbits and pheasants.

But uncertainty has started to curdle in the youngster’s mind. The man his dad shot grabs him and splutters, "Tell my daughter I love her." Yet his old man told him that all those ‘outsiders’ were nothing but callous murderers who need to be killed before they get their chance to do the same. And then, when sonny is forced to venture further afield to get some antibiotics for his sick pa, he encounters the matronly Silverstone – whose kindliness puts into doubt everything that he had been led to believe, and sets him on a path to realising that maybe his dad ain't been totally truthful about what’s really beyond the woods.

So basically, what we have here is that someone saw M Night Shyamalan’s THE VILLAGE and said, "Let’s do that again, but on a smaller scale and with colder weather!"

Moyer and Silverstone are both fine. He certainly isn’t any kind of sexual predator this time (possibly owing to a lack of opportunities and a diminished libido from near-starvation); she doesn't wear any designer gear or ever say "Like, totally, whatever."

But sadly, this forgettable film is unlikely to change how people perceive either actor. Or, to be honest, have any kind impact at all.

Two stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Not to spoil the twist for anyone who hasn’t seen THE VILLAGE, but … no.

What would a movie called THE FIRST SURVIVORS be about?  Once you know that twist, that opposite title would work for this film equally well.

Previously:  LAST FLAG FLYING

Next time:  THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com