One out of
Five stars
Running time:
84 mins
Predictable British thriller with a lacklustre script, poor direction and atrocious performances, though it does at least deserve points for its deserted London scenes.
What's it all about?
Directed by Imran Naqvi, The Last Seven opens with journalist William Blake (Simon Phillips) waking up face down on the concrete in a deserted London with no memory of how he got there. After a bit (actually quite a lot) of wandering around the city, London turns out to be not quite as deserted as he first thought and he hooks up with six other similarly afflicted survivors, including burly soldier Jack (Tamer Hassan), pompous minister Henry (John Mawson), Alan Rickman sound-alike Isaac (Ronan Vibert), no-nonsense leader type Robert (Sebastian Street), subdued teenager Chloe (Daisy Head) and Isabelle (Rita Ramani), with whom he seems to have a dimly remembered connection.
As the seven continue to walk the deserted streets of London, they attempt to recover their memories and figure out what connects them. However, they are also being stalked by a sinister figure (Danny Dyer) who seems intent on eliminating them one by one.
The Bad
You know you're in trouble when you're watching a supposedly mysterious thriller and you find yourself admiring the artwork on the walls in a cafe scene. The dialogue is flat and uninspiring throughout (despite a few token attempts to chuck in some political relevance, such as a reference to “the goings-on at Deepcut”) and there's no sense of tension or danger, even after it's established that something nasty is out to get the characters.
The Worst
The acting is atrocious too: Phillips alternates between shouts and whispers and delivers neither convincingly, Vibert's Rickman impression wears rapidly thin (not helped by the reams of pretentious dialogue he has to spout), Mawson overacts to a painfully embarrassing degree (thankfully, he's killed off first) and Hassan is saddled with a tough guy character and no one to get tough with. In fact, the whole lot of them are entirely out-acted by a single smirk from Danny Dyer (who is otherwise hardly in it and has no onscreen dialogue) towards the end.
That said, the film does at least deserve points for its location wrangling with the deserted London scenes – it's just a shame the script couldn't put them to better use.
Worth seeing?
The Last Seven is a predictable, badly directed and frequently boring thriller that's further hampered by some truly dreadful performances. One to avoid.