Last Kind Words

17 year old Eli, his Mom and heavy drinking bully of a father move to a Kentucky farm, owned by a friend (Brad Dourif) of the dad. Eli meets an attractive teenage girl called Amanda but is soon warned to steer clear of her because she's dangerous. Soon the worlds of the living and of the dead intertwine in Eli's simple rural life. It is a bit slow going at times, there are several gaping plot holes and some instances of awkward silences, or in other words weak acting, during characters' conversations. However the plot and characters were sufficient to hold my interest, there a few reasonable scares and I liked the setting. Bit of a sad film overall, and I mean that in a positive way. Brad Dourif has starred in some horror classics, he's also been in some stinkers but given the material he gives a decent performance here. Certainly his fans should check this movie out.

"Last Kind Words" is a very unlikely and different movie about a haunting. And it was a nice change of scenery to have a story dealing with a haunting in this manner, instead of it being all CGI effects and attempts to scare the audience.

The story in "Last Kind Words" is about a family that moves out to work on Mr. Waylon's (played by Brad Dourif) estate. While roaming the lands, Eli (played by Spencer Daniels), come to meet the young and reclusive girl Amanda (played by Alexia Fast). As their friendship grows, Eli stumbles upon the secret that Amanda is carrying about.

The movie was really well carried by the performances put on by Alexia Fast, Brad Dourif and Spencer Daniels.

As a movie without a myriad of CGI effects and in-your-face-effects, then "Last Kind Words" managed to tell a good story with only a handful of effects and make-up.

And story-wise, then director Kevin Barker managed to put together an enjoyable and entertaining movie, as well as contributing something new to the ghost / haunting genre.

However, the movie doesn't really have enough value to support a second watching. You watch the movie once, and then never return to it. But still, it was an entertaining movie.

This is a well made but odd little movie. I would categorise it more as a drama with supernatural themes, than a horror movie; it is essentially a ghost story. It is not groundbreaking, or even overly original, but it is executed very well. The acting is top class throughout and the characters keep you engaged. There are some parts of it which didn't make sense, but hard to discuss here without giving any spoilers, but just to hint at things, The old Girlfriend, and the uninvestigated murder. If I'm honest, it is not at all what I was expecting. The horror/supernatural elements were minimal, but when they appeared, were dealt with quite matter-of-factly.

Okay this has to be the most depressing film I've ever seen. The story itself is tragic, but filled with annoying and grim music scores. The scenery is nice, and the film was trying to be scary but didn't work. It was a ghost love story but it took extremely ages to explain the background. The characters were unlikable, especially "pa" who is abusive to his son. The mother is a wet blanket.The only nice character was the dog! At least nothing bad happened to him.

This film deserves a much higher score than it has. It a well acted, beautifully shot film with great atmosphere and a slightly different storyline. It is not a run of the mill gorefest and if you like severed limbs with buckets of blood and a boringly predictable soundtrack then look elsewhere. The publicity picture that goes with this film is totally misleading but I can understand that as this film is quite hard to categorise, watch this film and see what you think. OK, from here onwards is just padding as it seems one needs ten lines of text to get a review published. Why is this I wonder? There is only a small cast but each actor performs flawlessly ( is that how flawlessly is spelt? ) and the location and sets are wonderful shot in the early fall I suspect as the foliage is taking on lovely autumnal hues. Jeez I am really beginning to struggle for words now, all I wanted to do was write a couple of lines in praise of this underrated film and I end up having to wear my fingers to stumps trying to get to the magical ten lines, ahh it seems we are have achieved the rquired number of words so goodbye and happy viewing.