Johnny Frank Garrett's Last Word

Really fizzed out after that. Was lackluster and boring. I didn't really find much that got me into it. 3/10

The premise is good. A man wrongly sentenced to die for a crime he didn't commit, comes back for revenge.. The trailer looked promising, unfortunately if you have watched the trailer then there's no reason to watch the film.. Its very long winded, nothing really happens for along time, its almost as if they just said "that'll do". It tries to be complicated but it isn't. Tho the movie drags on, the music is annoying, the cast are good but their accents change thru out the film and that's annoying.. I give 3 starts because the first half hour is good, after that tho it all becomes very boring. Its not a film I'd watch again. A real waste of what could have been a good horror script.

Being from the area where this murder and subsequent execution happened, I've always been pretty interested in the story. There is enough doubt in the outcome of the case to make a movie that would be really fascinating. This one isn't.

I get it, they attempted to make a horror movie. Instead, they made a confusing movie that wasn't all that scary. I think I would have been less irritated had they not tried to link it to an actual murder. What is actually scary about the Johnny Frank Garrett story is the possibility an innocent man was executed and that it could happen to anyone. There's a documentary out there by a local lawyer, though it's somewhat slanted, it is pretty informative.

There were a couple of good actors in this film and I think they did their best with the content provided. Sadly, there just wasn't much there to work with.

According to the prosecution, on the morning of October 31, 1981, Johnny Frank Garrett raped, strangled, and killed 76-year-old Sister Tadea Benz in the St. Francis Convent of Amarillo, Texas. This film asks: what if he was innocent, and what is he was able to affect his accusers from beyond the grave?

The concept behind this film is an interesting one. The case is real, and was the subject of a documentary from director Jesse Quackenbush. What the writers did here was take the documentary as inspiration and a jumping-off point, and in the process gave the ghost of Garrett a voice.

For genre fans, the first thing that will be obvious is the inclusion of a few choice names. We have an ambitious district attorney played by Sean Patrick Flanery (Boondock Saints). We have director Simon Rumley, who shocked viewers with "P is for Pressure". Perhaps most interesting, though, is the composer: Simon Boswell, a prolific musician who got his start with movies thanks to Dario Argento.

Rumley came on board with the script already written, but he was a wise choice if the producers wanted someone to put their own stamp on the material. Rumley prefers to see his work as "extreme drama" rather than horror, and this project gives him plenty of opportunity for social commentary: the Texas death penalty, a miscarriage of justice, strong religious overtones… there is a message under the veneer of a revenge story.

Some critics have complained of "schlocky, bad acting", and Curt McCarl specifically said it's "shameful that an opportunity to tell an honest story was wasted on this schlock." Yes, multiple reviews have used the word schlock. And, sure, some of the acting is a bit over-the-top. But the film has a style all its own and some practical touches (including the lethal injection needle and the teacher's makeup) that should be applauded for their authenticity. Even the effort to get 90s-era computers and whatnot was probably no small task.

"Last Word" is not going to be the must-see horror film of 2017, but it certainly has its merits and is worth a look. If nothing else, it might bring increased attention to the documentary and original court case. And with Simon Rumley being a rising star, it never hurts to get acquainted with his work now (if you haven't already).

This is a campfire ghost story with delusions of being a film. Even the line of text we are given in the end has the feeling of "hanging from the door handle was a BLOODY HOOK!"

The choices in color saturation felt contrived. The filmmaker might as well have put captions in "this is a hallucination... this part is supposed to be scary." There were some odd, amateurish editing choices (such as phone calls where the view jumped back and forth between the main character and a side character, such as a secretary we will never see again, when a voice heard on the other end of the line would have been less distracting and just as useful). Most of the characters manage to be both overwrought and entirely two-dimensional. Many of them were just thrown in oddly for no apparent purpose other than to beef up the time.

Basically, as I said, it's a campfire tale. Someone tried to flesh it out enough to fill the time required for a movie, but most of it was not only unnecessary, it was distracting.

Ultimately, the question for this film isn't whether it was good or bad, but "why?"