Last Night (1998)

Last Night (1998/I)

I just watched this movie and figured I'd write a short review. It mostly sucked. Here you go:

Last night on Earth - Review

Ok I did not dig this movie at all, but perhaps I could exptrapolate some meaning from this dribble. I will essentially examine the paucity of characters existing at the end of a boring world for which we, as audience, do not care.

Toward the beginning Patrick goes to his family’s home where his mother recreates their favorite holiday meals all-at-once where his sister, Jenny, would rather be with her boyfriend partying in town than watching nostalgic 8mm films with her great aunts who feel that the younger generation cannot truly appreciate the end since they never lived.

Duncan played by Cronenberg systematically calls his electric company customers that remind them that the gas will remain on until the end to not only afford them some semblance of normativity, but also it gives them a way in which they can kill themselves –like he and his wife, Sandra, have planned.

The younger generation, represented by the 11 year old girl on the bus doesn’t understand what is actually happening and wants her ears pierced, but she does know she won’t live to her next birthday. Her mother is catatonic and this suggests a break down in the familial structure as they wait on a bus that’ll never transport them anywhere.

Sandra hopes to connect with her husband, to someone but remains as nihilistic as Patrick in that she chooses to murder herself and her unborn child to only connect with Patrick in the very last second before they both die, while her husband lies in a pool of his own blood mixed with melted strawberry icecream (Sandra’s favorite) after being killed mercilessly by a young punk.

I found the sexual apocalypse of Patrick’s high school friend interesting. Even in the end heterosexual sex is forbidden, although he can readily sodomize hookers, have aggressive sex with minority women and bed who may be the last middle-aged virgin on Earth.

Lastly, the running woman, played by Burroughs, much like all of the other characters, is only running in circles like a hamster on the wheel of life and death while God sits in heaven laughing. Nothing seems to matter and she just keeps running, which reminds me of the question of existence. Why are we actually here, and why does it all matter? Does it? Unlike On the Beach, this movie has little point beyond the fear and failure of a race who cannot kill themselves when it comes down to the last second or a world that doesn’t really seem to exist for any of its people.