First, no, I’m not going anywhere.  I’ll give a moment to collect yourselves before I tell you that the headline up there reflects that we’re reviewing a movie called The Final, not that that was in fact Screenhead’s last movie review.

Lions Gate sent a copy of this out as part of the After Dark Horrorfest, and we’re getting into the home stretch on this year’s fest with just two more to go after tonight’s little romp.

The Final follows a group of outcast kids who’ve decided that they’ve had enough of living the life of downtrodden outcasts, and have decided to gather all their tormentors in one spot and give them a hellish night of horror on a scale they had not imagined possible.  And how do they know so much about horror, you ask?  They, much like many of us, are longtime horror movie buffs.  And as we all well know, some of the most horrifying things you can imagine have already been put into one movie or another, dismemberments and skinnings and things that are just plain unfathomable.  And they’ll put them into play as they make their own movie here.

And how many of us remember our own high school careers with less than fond memories, eh?  How many of us remember our own tormentors?  More than a few, I’d say.  Knowing your audience, playing to it, even PANDERING to it–that’s the order of the day with The Final.

And for those who were in fact the downtrodden, they’ll recognize more than a little of themselves in this.  Chances are, they won’t like what they see.  Though they won’t like any more the memories it’ll bring back.  But it’s hard to scale this as a horror movie–it is, in fact, torture porn.  The fact that it’ll resonate with a whole lot of people doesn’t make it anything less than that.  It’s almost…deeply personal torture porn.

And yet, at the same time, the ending may well prove to be the scariest part of the whole movie.  Just one simple line…much like The Strangers…that turns the whole thing from simple torture porn to torture porn with horrible implications.  That line?

“There are more like us out there.”

Despite the sheer graphic nature of the content here, this should be required viewing for every high school student’s freshman year.  You ever want to make a bully think twice about picking on the smart kid?  Try exposing him to this little scenario.  And yet, it’s still kind of dissatisfying–there were so many victims here, but we only get to see what happens to a handful of them following their experiences.

It’s powerful, and yet it’s exploitative.  It’s torture porn that resonates within much of its audience.  It’s made meaningful by portraying absolute meaninglessness.

And now I’ve got to attach a number to it?  Sometimes this job’s tougher than it looks.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, after a lot of deliberation, hands this one a seven out of ten for being quite possibly one of the most unique and powerful bad movies ever.  It will, without question, make you uncomfortable, it will make you think, and it will do all this from inside one of the most useless and horrible types of movies ever.

Leave it to the After Dark Horrorfest to take a sow’s ear and turn it into a silk purse.