Last Kind Words

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Alfred B Aug 24 SPOILER WARNING: This review contains spoilers for the 2012 film "Last Kind Words." "Last Kind Words" is a grim and tedious exercise in Southern Gothic horror that collapses under the weight of its own clichés. Instead of crafting a compelling story, the film serves up a repetitive and reinforced series of tired stereotypes, all while engaging in a grotesque and exploitative depiction of violence and abuse. It feels less like a coherent artistic statement and more like a drunken nightmare, or worse, a financially motivated, sloppily executed project with no respect for its audience or its setting. The Reinforcement of Stereotypical Ideas of Kentucky The film's setting in rural Kentucky isn't a backdrop; it's a caricature. It leans heavily on every well-worn stereotype of the "backwoods" South: isolated, unkempt farms; a population of taciturn, violent, and morally bankrupt men; and a general atmosphere of pervasive decay and anachronism. The characters are not people but walking tropes—the violent, drunken father; the disturbed, reclusive old man; and the ghostly, tragic girl tied to the land's dark past. The film frames the entire region as a place where violence and incestuous desires are a part of the local folklore, reducing a complex state and its people to a collection of murder ballads and Gothic horror clichés. This repetition of tired ideas is lazy filmmaking at its worst, offering no new perspective or genuine insight, only the reinforcement of harmful, simplistic notions. The Sexploitation and Abuse of Women The most egregious failure of "Last Kind Words" is its sickeningly graphic and exploitative treatment of women. The central female character, Amanda, is not a person but a victim and a plot device, her entire existence predicated on her murder and subsequent haunting. The film's entire narrative is built around a historical act of violence against her—being hung from a tree—which is not only the inciting incident but also the object of repeated, voyeuristic attention. The details of her death and the circumstances surrounding it are used as a form of sensationalist entertainment, reducing her tragedy to a cheap thrill. The film’s focus on this violence, combined with the underlying incestuous subtext, feels less like a deep exploration of a dark past and more like a thinly veiled excuse to display the abuse of women. This isn't a cautionary tale; it's a piece of "pulp" that revels in the suffering of its female characters for the sake of a "spooky" atmosphere. A Financial Fraud or Drunken Nightmare The film's lack of a clear hero and its confusing, meandering plot give the impression that it's either an artistic disaster or a fraud. There is no one to root for, and the protagonist, Eli, is a passive observer who makes a series of baffling choices. The narrative jumps around, with events that feel unearned and a climax that is both anticlimactic and illogical. It’s a film that seems to have no understanding of its own stakes or its characters' motivations. This sloppiness points to either a complete lack of directorial control and vision—as if the whole thing was conceived and executed in a haze—or a cynical attempt to cash in on the horror genre without any of the creative effort required to make a compelling film. "Last Kind Words" is a miserable, exploitative watch that fails on nearly every level, leaving you with the unsettling feeling that you've wasted your time on a movie that has nothing of substance to say and only wants to shock you with its ugliness. See more 09/05/2020 Wonder how the audience watched this movie on theater by paying their money. Wasted..... See more 01/28/2015 This film is a trainwreck of bad filmmaking and should be avoided at all costs. A phenomenally boring and uninteresting main lead who doesn't drive the narrative anyway. He merely wanders around and somehow all the mysteries are told to him, even though he doesn't react to anything going or told to him. And that might be tolerable if the film was actually interesting in the story it was telling. But it is not, it takes what (you eventually learn) could have been a dark story and makes you care so little about that you are just waiting for it to end so you never have to go back to it ever again. Also, the ending will make you want to punch the writer for being a bloody idiot. See more jody s 08/25/2014 Awesome little ghostly fairy tale, a nice breath of fresh air from the typical modern horror slasher type of film. See more 07/17/2014 Fresh approach to the ghost genre. If you're looking for scare factor, then the image shown here is possibly the scariest thing you'll see, however, if you're wanting a well scripted story that entices you in and holds you through 'til the credits, then this is a good choice. 4 out of 5 stars ffor me. See more don s 07/12/2014 This low-budget horror is crap. I figured it out from the beginning, surprising my daughter. There are no scares and the story takes forever to get where it is going. The effects are all bones and mummified remains - nothing too difficult. The final act made no sense at all. Stupidity. See more Read all reviews

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