Review by Emily Craig (@emillycraig)
Directed by: Sean Cain
Starring: Lauren Walsh, Jason Mewes, Ezra Buzzington, Felissa Rose, Joanna Angel
Directed by Sean Cain (Jurassic City), The Last House is about Love (Lauren Walsh), a hooker who is in love with one of her clients, Ned (Jason Mewes, Clerks). Love wants out of her promiscuous career but is sent on one last job involving three disturbed mental patients. When Love and her two colleagues, Jenna (Alexis Zibolis) and Hailey (Jeanine Daniels) pull up at the large Hollywood pad, they are greeted by three of the most unusual, eccentric characters I’ve ever seen; we have Cleb (Ricardo Grey), a horny psychotic younger male, dominatrix Selma (Monique Parent) and the aptly named Hate (Ezra Buzzington, The Hills Have Eyes), the leader of the trio. Things go from weird to worse in this jumbled up erotic horror.
The film was shot in 2011 and released as Breath of Hate, which fits the film much better than The Last House; I’m not particularly sure why the film has been re-released and renamed, but it has. From the way in which the film is marketed, I was expecting torture, gore and nudity to the extreme, and if you’re expecting this as well, be prepared for disappointment. For a film involving sexual encounters and three escorts, The Last House lacks heavily in this department, which isn’t a bad thing; however it is replaced by extremely disturbing alternative sexual scenes including a moment between Cleb and a melon which was almost too gross to watch. Considering the film is about the three mental patients' desire to murder and torture their victims, there is hardly any torture at all; the characters die in the most disappointing ways – I was really expecting something a bit more experimental.
The plot is nonlinear and so I found it extremely confusing and difficult to follow. From the start of the film we are shown scenes from further down the line and I have no idea why the filmmakers have decided on this technique, as it adds almost nothing but puzzlement to the film. I found Ezra Buzzington to be menacing in his role as Hate, as were the other two antagonists - I just found the dialogue too scripted; I mean, obviously it is scripted, but the actors just sound like they are reading from one, which is not convincing at all.
I can see what this film is trying to be, a little edgy and out there, slightly avant-garde, but it just ends up being confusing. Unfortunately, this experiment turns out disappointingly as the horror element is almost nonexistent and characters such as Ned and Sonny (Jack Forcinito) should have never been included, as they cheapen the overall feel of the film.
