Critics Pan Zack Snyder’s ‘Last Photograph,’ Call It His ‘Worst Film Yet’
When the Toronto International Film Festival announced, just days before the fest got underway, that Zack Snyder’s latest film was going to make its surprise premiere at the festival, you had to feel a little bit curious.
Titled The Last Photograph, the movie was billed as Snyder’s first-ever independent feature, and a passion project he has wanted to make for years. (At one point, more than a decade ago, it was almost made with Christian Bale and Sean Penn in the leads.) Now it stars Stuart Martin, Fra Free, and Costanza Andrade, and, according to the press release, “follows an ex-DEA agent seeking revenge in a South American jungle where dangerous terrain and inner demons intermingle.” Was this going to be the comeback for the director of Dawn of the Dead and 300 we’ve been waiting for?
Maybe not, at least if the reviews of The Last Photograph out of Toronto are to be believed. Thus far, the reviews are not just mixed; a lot of them are downright brutal, with at least one critic calling it Snyder’s “worst film yet.” (Did that critic see Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver???)
Tweets about the film out of TIFF call it “borderline embarrassing,” “absolutely abysmal,” “a dull, brutal, flavorless trainwreck,” and “one of the worst to ever play this festival.” Yikes.
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Here is a sampling of some of the published reviews so far. You’ll note the Deadline one is at least mildly positive, so that’s something.
Chase Hutchinson, The Wrap:
Zack Snyder’s agonizing, ugly slog is his worst film yet.
Vikram Murthi, Indiewire:
A superficial departure for the director that mines a familiar, shallow thematic pool about the psychological burden of witnessing and perpetrating brutality.
Michael Rechtshaffen, The Hollywood Reporter:
Overstuffed with pretentious symbolism and flatly delivered, vapid dialogue that constantly overstates the obvious, the ultraviolent film ... is certain to be regarded as a major disappointment by Snyder’s rabid fan base.
Damon Wise, Deadline:
It’s good to see Snyder trying something so far out of his wheelhouse (well, at least a bit far out of it), sharpening his sometimes rusty storytelling skills without the safety net of superhero pyrotechnics.
Out of curiosity, I checked out the film’s Letterboxd page just to see how that compared with the professional critics and, well, it wasn’t any better over there. As of this writing, The Last Photograph has 98 half-star ratings (the lowest possible score), and 70 one-star ratings. The most popular review on the site at present reads in part: “By the end, I genuinely wanted this to be the last film I ever have to see from him.”
When will the rest of the world see The Last Photograph? That’s unclear; the film does not yet have an official release date.
