The best way for me to describe To Your Last Death is if the classic old school animation/violence of Heavy Metal and newer age Archer combined to have a baby, and Guillermo del Toro and David Lynch were the godparents. This crazy and ultra-violent collection of mayhem and horror is fun and shocking, yet never too much of both. In fact, just when you think you’ve figured it out…think again.
The story seems simple enough: Miriam DeKalb (Dani Lennon) is the daughter of the sinister and sadistic corporate giant Cyrus DeKalb (the wonderful Ray Wise) and fights back against his war-profiteering by creating a non-profit company called The Peace and Nonviolence Action Committee. Needless to say, there are some heavy daddy issues going on here. Daddy calls a family meeting, where Miriam reluctantly attends, along with her two brothers Ethan (Damien Haas) and Collin (Benjamin Siemon), and her sister Kelsy (Florence Hartigan). Cyrus announces he has brain cancer and then well, things go to hell soon after, as his plans for his family are anything but maternal.
Why do things go to hell? Let’s talk about the official synopsis: “A race of intergalactic gamblers who wager on human conflicts as bloody sport have chosen Miriam as the subject for their next game. Refereeing the match: The mysterious entity known only as the Gamemaster [Morena Baccarin] who has the power to reverse time and reconfigure events as they play out.”
This wonderful setup allows Miriam to try and reverse the events that transpired during and after the family meeting, as the Gamemaster has reversed her life 24 hours, and not only change things but finally get some much-needed closure, ala revenge, on her father. Of course, it’s not that easy and the game as it were, has rules that change as the timeline progresses.
If this sounds like spoilers, it isn’t. The plotlines change many times, go in weird, unexpected, hilarious, and ultra-violent ways that has both Miriam and the viewer wondering what is going to happen next. Wise chews up the verbal scenery as Cyrus and his thugs, led by Pavel (Bill Moseley) are just nasty extensions of his ambitions and vicious ways. It’s ironic that the narrator The Overseer is voiced by the legendary William Shatner, as some of this story reminded me of the original Star Trek series episode “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” where three disembodied beings gambled on people abducted to fight against each other like gladiators.
Director Jason Axinn, not to mention writers Tanya Klein and Jim Cirile, do a great job of taking this idea, which literally has no boundaries or limits, and making it entertaining as hell, spilling blood and detaching limbs along the way, and moving at such a great pace the viewer can’t help but get caught up in it all. The imagery is frighteningly real at times, and the voice actors play a big part in making the characters interesting, both in whom you cheer for and who you want dead.
To Your Last Death takes the best of many different things and somehow mashes it all together into a visual and horrific delight. I’m not sure if there is a big audience out there for this kind of film, but it is very well done and entertaining from start to finish.
To Your Last Death is available nationwide on Blu-ray on Oct. 6 via Quiver Distribution.
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