‘Last the Night’ (Pacerville) Movie Review - A Spectrum of Identity Crisis!

Set during the pandemic, ‘Last the Night’ also known as Pacerville, is directed by Nick Leisure from a script written by himself and Tom Chilcoat and starring Brian Austin Green in the lead role.

It is not an over-exaggeration to categorize this movie as one of the worst movies in recent memory. The story takes well within the context of the pandemic and revolves around John Dunbar (Brian Austin Green), a history teacher, who plots revenge after getting made fun of by his students. The film tries to be many things but excels at nothing. For the most part, it felt like things were randomly pieced together to form a bigger picture without much sense.

The characters themselves felt like a mismatch with the other characters and didn’t blend well with the narrative of the plot. Every conversation in the movie didn’t feel like it had any purpose, and was just there for the sake of it. The four students - Sadie (Makena Taylor), Trevor (Acoryé White), Miguel (David Valdes), and Genesis (Julia Quang) were poor throughout. Neither at any point did there feel any chemistry among the four, nor were they written well, with their only personality trait being that of ‘consistently annoying’. The character of Miguel in particular was very cliché in the sense it gave an impression of a ‘high school bully’ from a ‘teenage soap drama’.

Brian Austin Green in the lead was average at best but far from the worst part of the movie. He didn’t do much with his character and lacked convolution in his portrayal. For the first act, there is absolutely nothing striking about his character as a lead. It was not until the second act, that he showed glimpses of what was required of his character. But that doesn’t compensate for his erratic and irregular performance.

The movie takes the audience for granted as it presents itself with dumb reasoning and explanations of different conjectures. Also, the fact that the conversations regarding the pandemic were mentioned needlessly all over the place. It tries to explain some character motivations as a natural reaction to the repercussions of the pandemic, but it fails to justify their relevance as they feel very unnecessary in general.

Another issue is that the build-up around the climax is put up in the least interesting way possible. It is very disengaging and doesn’t feel worth it to wait around for the main event. It suffers from an identity crisis all over the place. The characters themselves remain confused about their intentions. For a thriller, it lacks the suspense, build-up, and gore/violence to stamp its authority, as it remains shallow in its approach. Since the other elements don’t bode in well together, the shortcomings of less environmental knowledge also remain highlighted.

Overall, nothing is exciting about this movie that is even vividly rememberable. It tries to be serious but doesn’t take itself too seriously. Moreover, the recent school shootings will make this movie a controversial hot topic. Nevertheless, it is better to skip this one.

Final Score – [3/10]
Reviewed by - Devyansh Anand
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