The Last Horror Movie

Horror movies have been teasing away at an explicit link between the killer’s gaze and the camera’s at least since ‘Peeping Tom’ (1960). More recently, ‘Blair Witch’ and ‘The Ring’ have taken an opposing tack, exploiting the private qualities of video to stress the potential vulnerability of filmmaker and viewer. This exercise in banal evil aims to straddle that divide: purportedly the video diary of wolfishly urbane sociopath Max (Kevin Howarth), whose quotidian routine alternates off-hand domestic slayings with tea at grandma’s, it offers a potentially intriguing take on the horror movie as audio-visual relic, but comes a cropper with its arch, self-regarding tone. Max’s inveigling second-person address and insouciant running commentaries are undermined by the triteness of his observations while the project’s key conceit – that it’s been taped over a schlocky slasher video rented by you, the viewer – is antithetical to a theatrical release.