 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Johnny Frank Garrett’s Last Word • Year: 2016 • Country: USA • Director: Simon Rumley • Main cast: Devin Bonnée, Sean Patrick Flanery, Erin Cummings, Mike Doyle • Runtime: 95 minutes • Production company: A7SLE Films, Boss Media • TRAILER |
Johnny Frank Garrett’s Last Word is one of these movies that while you are watching it you feel like this is the kind of hungover film for a rainy Sunday afternoon when you would swallow anything that goes through the tube: totally uninteresting and easy to forget.
The plot from this movie could sound like it might have some intriguing moments: A young man executed for committing murder leaves a curse for everybody who sent him to the death row. Some crumbs of revenge, demonical malediction and vengeance for injustices. It might have something worth of interest, no?
The dynamic opening credits for the film might foreshadow the happiest of our hopes, but as soon the action starts, with the insipid popular trial full of cliches and the over stupid attittude of the different characters, my expectations for an enjoyable time started to drop. Also then, when a few suposed to be creepy moments happen, when the cruelty of the damned familes must had exploted, it all stays like a pastiche of the mildest moments we have seen in all these kind of vengeful ghost flicks. And, come on, a happy ending for a story like this? Really, pissed off spirit of an unfair trial? Demons nowadays can’t do it right or what?
Director Simon Rumley has already a wide carreer in short budget and poor result horror films. Although his segment “P Is for Pressure” is one of the less punishable ones in the project The ABCs of Death (2012), when it comes to long lenght films he sinks. Photography and art try to give an oppressing feeling to the viewer, but instead it becomes almost comical. The action is very predictable and the thrill that they might surprise you and scare you at any time disappears after the first half hour.
If you just want to spend some time not really caring much what you’re watching, maybe you can find a reason to enjoy this movie. But if you expect something new, at least one single surprising thing, something that you can remember for longer than 10 minutes after the film is over, I think you should skip this one and don’t look back.
When I saw this movie at the Sitges Film Festival 2016, it was part of the Audience Awards section, and when leaving the theatre most of the votes were pretty positive. To my surprise, because I left with the feeling that I just watched one of the dullest films of the whole festival. And I still keep this opinion, for me Johnny Frank Garrett’s Last Word was one of the worst movies of the whole event lineup. But that is just my opinion.
RATE: 3/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2836628
