The Last Matinee (2020)

 

a.k.a. Al morir la matinée

Director: Maximiliano Contenti

Screenplay: Manuel Facal and Maximiliano Contenti

Cast: Luciana Grasso as Ana, Ricardo Islas as Asesino Come Ojos, Julieta Spinelli as Angela, Franco Durán as Tomás, Pedro Duarte as Mauricio, Yuly Aramburu as Maria Julia, Hugo Blandamuro as Hugo, Daiana Carigi as Maite

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

From Uruguay, this film is absolutely the creation of a director, Maximiliano Contenti, who loves horror films, and wanted to create a film in tribute to giallo and slasher films he has likely seen. As I will also nod to, as his filmography include non-horror films including documentary work on subjects like the Uruguayan jazz scene, this is a beautiful example of someone from a country whose cinema that is sadly ignored in the West bringing their own voice to the proceedings. "Beautiful" may be inappropriate for a film about a psychopath who kills is victims and steals their eyeballs, but as he is gleefully riffing on films which he proudly nods to in the film posters of The Last Matinee's central location, Contenti is still making a film as a Uruguayan creator and adding to the horror canon alongside the likes of The Silent House (2010).

As a premise, it is an easy one to start with for this Uruguayan-Argentinean co-production, that just when you think it's safe to go to a cinema, there is a serial killer in the aisles. Set in the capital of Uruguay, Montevideo, in 1993 on a rainy day, a mysterious man in black gloves eating the last pickle from a giant jar enters a cinema for its last screening of the night, all with terrible intent for his bloodlust and obsession with collecting eyeballs in that aforementioned jar. Already from the prologue, you get a good glimpse of the style of the proceedings. From the colour palette - bold primaries for a bag of sweets a kid leaving accidentally spills to the murky yellow walls on the stairway - to the neon, the world depicted is stylistic in an engaging way. The score, by Hernán González, fully nods to the fact this is a throwback tribute to older films Contenti has seen, evoking giallo and slasher films as a huge influence whilst being a tribute that helps the movie to have a distinct style.

The set up for potential victims is that Ana (Luciana Grasso) visits the cinema to greet her dad, only to be stuck taking the shift as the projectionist as her father is not medically okay to be doing ten plus hour shifts in the booth. Other characters among this slasher set -up is the kid who managed to stay behind to watch an illicit horror movie he is too young to see, the male and female couple who are awkwardly dating, the young adults already drunk on vodka outside, a girl called "Brooke Shields" in her attractiveness, and the old man who refuses to leave or pay because, out of reality, he believes he has already seen the films. With a real film playing within this one in a nice touch, Frankenstein: Day of the Beast (2011) with its director Ricardo Islas playing the killer himself, there is the growing tension as this figure is seemingly able to pick victims off in staff and patrons with the sick obsession with scoping their eyeballs out for trophies.

It is a really cool idea - horror films have metatextual nodded to their existence, and Contenti has a poster for one, Bigas Luna's Anguish (1987), which was famous for its scenes in a movie theatre, prominent in scenes alongside his first ever feature film Muñeco Viviente V (2008) and Dario Argento's Opera (1987). Unlike, say, Lamberto Bava's Demons (1985) however, which was a deliberately over-the-top film even in the horror canon, the tone is imagining a place in the dark or with people distracted where someone is carefully eliminating patrons quietly without anyone noticing. The film is more exaggerated than this, but this does provide a slow burn pace even within what is a pure style-for-style-sake horror tribute. It takes a while for actual gruesomeness to transpire, when two people get a spike between them to make their kiss more memorable, upping the violence and gore stakes, but the film is helped so much more because we are even setting up the small story beforehand. These characters get to exist to be someone rather than just pure cannon fodder, which was a problem you do find with a lot of original slashers where victims barely get any time to make their demises punch you in the gut. There is at least a sense of tragedy when people are killed here, even as archetypes, due to this pacing choice.

Also, even if confined to said cinema, it is already a pleasure to see a film from Uruguay just in terms of how the cast talk to each other, even the diegetic sound of cinema adverts and decor to set up the time period. Later in his career, Maximiliano Contenti would make another film about the capital of Montevideo, Hot Club de Montevideo (2023), a documentary about the titular club opened in 1950 dedicated to having jazz performed. That one detail really does suggest a great deal about him as a creator, how The Last Matinee itself like quite a few modern horror films is a tribute to the past. In terms to the choice of chronological setting, beyond removing mobile phones from the plot line, it also feels like a time, set in 1993, when he would have been around the age to have already been bitten by the bug of horror cinema in general as a man born in 1984. Even casting Ricardo Islas as the killer feels like a more profound choice as, whilst the flood gates for horror from Uruguay definitely grew from The Silent House onwards, some of the earliest from the eighties onwards were Ricardo Islas' own directorial work, making him a pioneer whose casting here feels even more beautiful as a nod of respect of his career as an innovator. Again, when he gets to eat an eyeball at one point and menace a child, that may not seem appropriate to use the term "beautiful" for, but with my admiration for The Last Matinee for these reasons, and also being a great piece of pure piece of ghoulish horror film making, it works in an appropriately perverse way.