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<blockquote data-quote="Spells &amp; Karma" data-source="post: 432346" data-attributes="member: 23"><p style="text-align: center"><strong><span style="font-size: 22px">Final Summer</span></strong> (2023)</p> <p style="text-align: center"></p> <p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/t3wAAeSw0P1ou2t2/s-l1600.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 588px" /></p> <p style="text-align: center"></p><p></p><p>This is a hangover from when I added a load of terrible-looking slashers to my watchlist for October watches. Some I've watched. Some I deleted. At least one film was removed after attempting to watch it for five minutes.</p><p></p><p>Based on the poster, <em>Final Summer</em> is the one that I felt most confident about knowing the tone. It smacks of contemporary <em>Friday The 13th</em> ripoff, so I expected it to be low budget. But low budget by 2023 standards often hits the nail on the head for someone whose favourite slasher era is late-Nineties (think <em>I Know What You Did Last Summer </em>or<em> Urban Legend</em>: late-Seventies/early-Eighties-inspired, but a bit more glossy with just a whisper of post-modernism and without getting <u><em>too</em></u> clever).</p><p></p><p>And, this is pretty much what I got. The cast was made up of unknowns, with a focus on the young ones who make up for inexperience with enthusiasm and hormonal-emoting. It's a tad more diverse than the source material, but not in-your-face. Instead of the lesbian heavy petting and aggressively quirky characters of <em>Founders Day,</em> we have relative Nineties simplicity of the solid black character (who would typically have been played by LL Cool J in the Nineties or Anthony Anderson more recently) and the body positive (i.e. overweight) best friend. In the political correctness stakes, the most jarring undertone was the expected feministic element (oh, how I inwardly sighed when - after all the men being killed off easily - the first character to put up a good fight and start throwing the antagonist round was, of course, a woman. Adding insult to injury, she's the same woman who had selfishly treated the only remaining man as a minion, ordering him to go and get something from the car, despite his protestations about the danger). Still, though, the 2023 sensibilities aren't overpowering and so it remains enjoyable to watch.</p><p></p><p>It's a very 12/PG-13 kind of film. The killings are mostly bloodless and implied. There are no (successful) jump scares and the intensity is dialled right down. Most of this is not a bad thing in my book, because it allows the focus to be on character and atmosphere and, while it's not entirely successful in the character department (the post-trauma element dilutes things. It pays off a little at the end, but could have done so without the frequent flashbacks which slow the story down and don't hold the interest), the atmosphere is reasonable enough. There's lots of walking in the woods at night which has a kind of cosiness to it.</p><p></p><p>As for the killers. Well, neither was a huge surprise, in fact I had my best placed the older mastermind from her very first innocuous scene (I mean, we're doing <em>Friday The 13th</em> here). But it worked. And the younger male killer, while not particularly intense or threatening was kind enough to spend the last act running round in a pair of grey shorts, which was appreciated.</p><p></p><p>There's rather a lot of exposition at the end, but I'm not convinced it made sense of small details like motive or background. But hey-ho.</p><p></p><p>When I was looking for the image, I found a review that described the film as "flat" and lacking a beating heart and I suppose that sums it up. There's definitely something missing. Still, I'd rather watch this than something like <em>Sleepaway Camp</em>. Or even most of the <em>Friday The 13th </em>sequels, for that matter.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Funnily enough, <em>Final Summer, </em>which is mostly played completely straight, included a number of overt references to <em>Friday The 13th </em>(the series it's homaging). At one point someone mentioned Jason as they were walking in the woods. This was followed up with someone imitating the "Ki-ki-ki-ki" "Ma-ma-ma-ma" soundtrack (as usual, they got it wrong and did it as "Ch-ch-ch-ch" "Ha-ha-ha-ha"). And later in the film someone donned a hockey mask to confront the killer.</p><p></p><p>It sounds terrible, and might have been better not to have done it at all, but I'll take it as perhaps the only meta element of a fairly simplistic story.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Spells & Karma, post: 432346, member: 23"] [CENTER][B][SIZE=6]Final Summer[/SIZE][/B] (2023) [IMG width="588px"]https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/t3wAAeSw0P1ou2t2/s-l1600.jpg[/IMG] [/CENTER] This is a hangover from when I added a load of terrible-looking slashers to my watchlist for October watches. Some I've watched. Some I deleted. At least one film was removed after attempting to watch it for five minutes. Based on the poster, [I]Final Summer[/I] is the one that I felt most confident about knowing the tone. It smacks of contemporary [I]Friday The 13th[/I] ripoff, so I expected it to be low budget. But low budget by 2023 standards often hits the nail on the head for someone whose favourite slasher era is late-Nineties (think [I]I Know What You Did Last Summer [/I]or[I] Urban Legend[/I]: late-Seventies/early-Eighties-inspired, but a bit more glossy with just a whisper of post-modernism and without getting [U][I]too[/I][/U] clever). And, this is pretty much what I got. The cast was made up of unknowns, with a focus on the young ones who make up for inexperience with enthusiasm and hormonal-emoting. It's a tad more diverse than the source material, but not in-your-face. Instead of the lesbian heavy petting and aggressively quirky characters of [I]Founders Day,[/I] we have relative Nineties simplicity of the solid black character (who would typically have been played by LL Cool J in the Nineties or Anthony Anderson more recently) and the body positive (i.e. overweight) best friend. In the political correctness stakes, the most jarring undertone was the expected feministic element (oh, how I inwardly sighed when - after all the men being killed off easily - the first character to put up a good fight and start throwing the antagonist round was, of course, a woman. Adding insult to injury, she's the same woman who had selfishly treated the only remaining man as a minion, ordering him to go and get something from the car, despite his protestations about the danger). Still, though, the 2023 sensibilities aren't overpowering and so it remains enjoyable to watch. It's a very 12/PG-13 kind of film. The killings are mostly bloodless and implied. There are no (successful) jump scares and the intensity is dialled right down. Most of this is not a bad thing in my book, because it allows the focus to be on character and atmosphere and, while it's not entirely successful in the character department (the post-trauma element dilutes things. It pays off a little at the end, but could have done so without the frequent flashbacks which slow the story down and don't hold the interest), the atmosphere is reasonable enough. There's lots of walking in the woods at night which has a kind of cosiness to it. As for the killers. Well, neither was a huge surprise, in fact I had my best placed the older mastermind from her very first innocuous scene (I mean, we're doing [I]Friday The 13th[/I] here). But it worked. And the younger male killer, while not particularly intense or threatening was kind enough to spend the last act running round in a pair of grey shorts, which was appreciated. There's rather a lot of exposition at the end, but I'm not convinced it made sense of small details like motive or background. But hey-ho. When I was looking for the image, I found a review that described the film as "flat" and lacking a beating heart and I suppose that sums it up. There's definitely something missing. Still, I'd rather watch this than something like [I]Sleepaway Camp[/I]. Or even most of the [I]Friday The 13th [/I]sequels, for that matter. Funnily enough, [I]Final Summer, [/I]which is mostly played completely straight, included a number of overt references to [I]Friday The 13th [/I](the series it's homaging). At one point someone mentioned Jason as they were walking in the woods. This was followed up with someone imitating the "Ki-ki-ki-ki" "Ma-ma-ma-ma" soundtrack (as usual, they got it wrong and did it as "Ch-ch-ch-ch" "Ha-ha-ha-ha"). And later in the film someone donned a hockey mask to confront the killer. It sounds terrible, and might have been better not to have done it at all, but I'll take it as perhaps the only meta element of a fairly simplistic story. [/QUOTE]
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