Customer Reviews

Last of the Living

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Last of the Living isn't an outstanding film, but at least it's not terrible. With all the independent zombie films out there you can trudge through a lot of them before finding anything that's "acceptable" let alone outstanding, so it was nice that Last of the Living didn't just outright suck. Unfortunately, since it wasn't outstanding, there's little reason for anyone outside of die hard genre fans to pick it up and watch it, as is the case with most average zombie films.

The story follows three friends who move from mansion to mansion kicking back playing video games, watching movies, drinking beer, and occassionally venturing out into the wasteland for more supplies or just to fight some zombies and boredom all in one go. The characters are acted out well enough (there are some slipups where lines were delivered so badly I felt removed from the film, but there aren't too many of those), and there's tons of dry humor between them. I have to say that my sides may have not been hurting, but I did laugh a few times and cracked a smile several other times. It's rare for me to audibly laugh while watching a film alone, and Last of the Living pried some giggles out of me so I'll definitely remember it for that.

The story is minimal--like most zombie films our interest is set more on the characters surviving than what actually goes on. I liked the characters well enough, so the typical zombie fare storyline of survival and hope for a cure didn't bother me much. Plus, the plot didn't try any absurd explanations for the outbreak or try to venture into new ground that the writers probably wouldn't have been able to handle. There were a few moments that should have been emotional that weren't really explored very deeply and passed by much more swiftly than they should have to carry any weight, although if they had been explored deeply it probably would have turned out sour and cliche so it's a lose/lose situation on those scenes.

The zombies were certainly zombies, although the makeup on some seemed to be more cared for than on others and this care seemed to come mostly at random. It wasn't especially distracting, I just wish the style of some of the zombies earlier in the film carried on throughout. They looked very creepy, disturbing and even mildly original to what I've seen in other films. Some of them looked downright rushed, but this thing is indepenent after all, you've got to expect things like that.

My real major disappointment with Last of the Living is that a couple of scenes are lifted directly from 28 Days Later and at least one from Shaun of the Dead (I haven't seen the latter as recently so I'm not sure if any others were as well). They stood out sorely against the rest of the film.

Last of the Living does have enough that if you're a die hard zombie fan you'll probably get a kick out of it. The dry humor gives it enough spice to separate it from other average independent films and the characters don't feel like stock characters. Although neither is enough to seperate it from actually being "average" in general, it at least ranks head of its class.

And obviously, if you haven't watched independent zombie films before this isn't the film for you, and if you're looking to start watching independent zombie films it's also not the place for you to start.

This was not a horrible film. It was actually ok. The cinematography seemed fluent, there was decent story and the actors were on it. The only thing about this film that could have been better was a stronger script. The tags on the cover, at least the one I bought suggested "destined to become a cult classic" by Terror 4 Fun & "...a breakthrough zombie film that injects a high dose of hilarity" by Revenant Magazine. I don't see this being a cult classic but at least a good watch for a hardcore zombie film fan. As for the "Hilarity", I had some smiles crack through most of it, close to the end the humor got a bit better, but not by much. I think this would have been a better film if it had been more serious a film, however having said that, the humor it had seemed more on a realistic level than most. What there was didn't seemed forced.

At the offset of the film I thought it was going to be 28 Days later meets Shaun of the Dead, but that went away quickly, and happily so, as I would have been totally put of by the film if it were just rehash. I suggest viewing with little expectancy and you'll find it to be ok enough to own, but if one goes in expecting things that are reviewed on the cover, one may find themselves very disappointed. I applaud everyone involved in the film for taking the chances they did, I just would have liked a stronger script.

I didnt expect much but was happy with the results. This is a low budget movie filmed in New Zealand. Good story, decent acting and good special effects. If you can get it for under 7 bucks there are worse things you could spend your money on.

The movie starts out with three men living together. The electricity is still operating even with no one to attend to the grid or power plants. Electricity is simply magic. They get bored with their current location and opt to go find a new place to live. They pile into a killer Ford and drive along until they find a church which they think is defensible. They enter the church and end up finding a female scientist and her father who has a bite mark. He dies and the four of them take off. She is part of a plan to save the world. The plan is to go to the local hospital. Get some zombie blood and process it. Fly off to a nearby island where there are fellow scientists and save the world. The guys have nothing better to do so they join her. While the infection is viral, zombie blood, which splatters all over people doesn't spread the disease, only bites from slow moving zombies with the classic one leg drag. The movie contained humor, good dialouge, and an easy to follow plot with acceptable acting. The main problem was the lack of characters. No sex or nudity.

I wasn't expecting much of this movie. I was happily surprised. The plot is fairly simple, but enough to motivate the characters. The FX are surprisingly good in a few places. The actors are like-able and play their parts well. There were some standard horror / zombie scare moments -- but that's the fun part of zombie movies. The movie veered into "fart joke" territory about 2/3 of the way through -- enough to be noticeable. I've spent more on other movies and been much more disappointed... it's worth the buy.

This is a nice little independent low budget Zombie film. It was actually fimled in New Zealand, and that in itself is a bit extrodinary. I hardly know any film from there. What makes this movie better or at least different from most in the Zombie genre is the fact that it dosn't take it self so serious, as most Zombie movies almost inevitably do. Actually, there is plenty of "hidden" humor in it, so that it creates a nice comical atmosphere to go right along with the "seriousness" of Zombies stalking the enviornment.

The plot is good because it dosn't try to be anything extrodinary or pretentious, so there's no typical Hollywood blown out of porportions plot here, just something rather believable. You have 3 guys that are all between late 20s early 30s that discover that they've survived a massive Zombie plague, and now are forced to live in a post apocalyptic world. At first, this might sound pretty gloomy but they are not totally upset or even depressed about this, they simply figure that they'd make the best out of the predicament that they're in. So they tend to look at the brighter side of things. That includes that since in a post apocalyptic world they aren't required to work anymore, they simply stay at home, play video games, listen to music or venture outside to go "shopping". They're shopping sprees are actually hilarious, since all the supermarkets are abandoned, they can go into any shop without paying anything and taking whatever they want. I really liked the scene in which they go shopping for groceries, and afterwards when one of them insists to go into a CD/DVD store to look for a new album, one of the friends retorts "do you actually believe that someone would go through the trouble of putting that album into this shop, even if the band managed to finish recording that album." The kicker is that the guy actually finds that new CD that he's been hoping to get at that store. In this sense, they are in a strange way in a kind of shopping heaven or nirvana, where they can get anything that's in the stores for free, and whenever they get bored by the place that their living in they simply move to another mansion. One of their favorite hobbies is wacking Zombies in their neighborhood. Unlike most Zombie films, they don't resort to automatic weapons of any kind to do this, but have a down to earth mentality when it comes to eliminating them. So their weapons are very street based: a baseball bat, a golf club, and what appear to be martial art sticks are used extensively by the 3 to rid their neighborhood of aggressive Zombies.

When they actually do meet a young woman they decided to forget about their hobby and lifestyle of a while and join her to find a cure for their apocalypic world. She seems to be a scientist whose father (who dies not much later) had been working on a cure that can transverse the Zombie effects on human and turn them back into normal people. But she claims that they have to go to Scott Island because there the medical facilities are available that they would need to mass produce this cure, she also says that this place has not been infected by the Zombies. From there on the 4 embark on a hell bent for leather mission to save the world, or at least New Zealand from the ominious Zombie plague.

Anyways, I don't intent to give any too much of the rest of the story, but the movie is well done for a low budget film, and its rather enjoyable. While its not 28 Days Later, which is obviously a much bigger budget film, it is still respectable for what it actually is - a nice humorous Zombie flick.

This DVD is probably of most interest to Zombie film fans that don't mind humor as well. Finally, I wanted to say that the acting was done well enough by those newcomers, and I hope that we'll see more of them in the future.

I enjoyed this movie. The characters were likeable and felt like real people. It was funny. The story went somewhere. It's true, the special effects would not have been good enough for 1970s Dr Who, but who cares! This was a fun movie. The soundtrack was pretty good too.

There's something about the end of the world which brings out the immature side of people and they used that here. They glorified in it!

My biggest complaint was that the story never really ended. They just stopped telling it. That's cool if there's a sequel, but if not that's a bummer.

I'd like someone to give the people who made this a real budget and then we'd see what they could do.

My main problem with this film was the fact that the lead characters acted pretty juvenile. Juvenile in that they act like young teenage brothers, trying to out do each other instead of adults trying to survive in a world overrun by zombies. Shawn of Dead had lead characters who were immature, but they never acted younger than their age and they were aware of the zombie danger around them! Maybe more time should have been spent on thinking of funny situations and then taking time to write a really good zombie movie that was funny. OR... if the lead actors had actually been 12 to 15 years old, the script would have been more believable!

Even with the childish behavior, the acting was pretty good, better than a lot of low budget zombie movies I have seen!

If you are expecting anything more than a typical zombie movie, you are expecting way too much. The movie is great anyways. Ashleigh Southam is very attractive and I would have expected more of a scenario where the two men are fighting more for her attention, but the movie stays classy. Not a blockbuster, but definately worth buying if you love zombie movies.

I own this and have watched it many times. I love it thought it was fantastic. I really love to see what other country's and cultures do with their zombie flicks and this ranks right up there with Shawn of the Dead. Its a must see!