So you're decompressing on the weekend. It has been an awful week---you've worked yourself ragged, you've had to burn the midnight oil to get a major presentation out, the boss hated it, the clients balked, no way of knowing whether you're going to get the deal. The girlfriend is still not talking to you, for whatever reason.

So you figure you'll grab some brew and a horror flick from the local video store. You rent "The Last Horror Movie", you pour a cup of liquid cheer, you pop the tape in the hopper and let it rip.

Something unexpected happens.

Seconds after the hapless waitress working the late shift at the roadside Michigan diner is about to get slaughtered by the masked serial killer, the screen goes fuzzy---white noise, electric snow---and then a man's face---lanky black hair, thick pursed lips, a smug and arrogant countenance---fills the screen.

He introduces himself as `Max' (Kevin Howarth, truly a one-man show). He tells you he taped over the horror flick you rented. He also tells you that in its place is his own `home movie', but rejoice: you're still going to get to see a horror movie. The only difference: this time the horrors will be real.

You like scary movies? Then you're in for a treat.

What you're going to watch, then---should you choose to keep watching---is Max's little experiment in Reality TV: he's going to commit murders, real murders, carried out against random victims---and film them.

The rest of the movie boils down to four `themes': 1) Max going about his work: throttling, stabbing, and bludgeoning his unwitting victims; 2) Max talking directly to the camera---to us---about his philosophy of life; 3) Max trying to psyche his cameraman into killing someone (Mark Stevenson, who plays the bloodthirsty down-and-out homeless assistant as part reluctant monster and part good-hearted human Border collie); 4) Max hanging out with friends and family (and musing to the camera about killing them, of course).

Now: "The Last Horror Movie" moves along briskly, is competently shot (yes, it captures the raw home-movie feel, but without the barf-inducing vertiginous camera-maneuvers of Blair Witch or Bourne Supremacy), carries out is bloody business and gets home in time for chow. If you release yourself to its black magic, and turn all the lights in the house out, you might even get goosebumps in the final five minutes.

But "The Last Horror Movie" is not really horror: maybe I'm jaded, but I wasn't shocked by any of the killings. This film has been compared to "Man Bites Dog" and "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer", which is an insult to either of those truly disturbing and genuinely pioneering films: "Man Bites Dog" is napalm, "Henry" a bunker-buster, and---by contrast---"The Last Horror Movie" is a knife shoved deep into the back of your neck in the dark.

But hey, a knife in the dark gets the job done, doesn't it?

Cheap, silent, quick, sarcastic, and very deadly, "The Last Horror Movie" succeeds in spades: not as horror, but as a wickedly gleeful little Q&A (with the victims, of course!) on the Meaning of Life.

In that regard, the movie rises and falls on the strength of the actor playing Max: Kevin Howarth is "The Last Horror Movie". You should see the movie for Howarth's insanely amazing, and genuinely moving, performance. His expressive facial expressions, his caustic, brutal, Satanic wit, the range of emotion on his face, the relentless questions---all of this could have been wasted in the hands of a less accomplished actor, and had Max been weakly cast, the flick would have been a disaster. Not so with Howarth, who makes his Max captivating, engaging, charismatic, and surprisingly compelling in his bleak assessment of the world.

Now if you want disturbing---the cold grue of the dead gaze of a camera that chronicles, without moralizing, a serial killer's ghoulish adventures---look elsewhere: this isn't that movie, despite that being the way it promotes itself. In a world bombarded by "Silence of the Lambs", "Man Bites Dog", "I Stand Alone", "Maniac", and "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer", there are plenty of nastier films that serve up blood and gore and shock.

Why, then, did "Last Horror Movie" quickly capture my interest and slake my ceaseless thirst for the deranged? Easy answer: it's a sincerely spooky little flick that gets right down to its creepy-crawly business. But the deeper answer: I like the fact that Max isn't a garden-weed monster: this dude is seriously looking for answers.

If you're thoroughly miserable, Max wonders---well, why live? Why do these hapless souls, leading their lives of desperation both quiet and noisy, their faces screwed up in despair---why do they struggle so against the blade, the strangler's embrace, the pistol shoved up against the skull? Why do they fight so hard, cling so tenaciously to a life they despise?

Good questions, and Max takes considerable pains---as do his victims---in getting answers. The least you could do is bolt the door, secure the windows, douse the lights, and spend a rainy evening scoping out the results of his experiment. Speaking of which, did you just hear a noise? Is that someone in the corner, huddled next to the fridge? And why is he holding a videocamera...?

The reviews were crap, but I guess I might give it a go. But didn't this steal it's idea wholesale from Man Bites Dog?

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To his credit Cypher does mention the obvious similarity to Man Bites Dog and the fact that MBD is a superior film.

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