To Your Last Death is a bizarre oddity from director Jason Axinn and writers Jim Cirile and Tanya C. Klien that sees a young woman surviving a brutal attack by her abusive father that saw her siblings killed. Now, thanks to outside supernatural forces, she’s forced to relive the same events over and over until a certain outcome is achieved. Crowdfunded through Indiegogo, this film is done in an animation style similar to TV’s Archer or the old motion comics seen online, and the art style is very impressive throughout, however, this animation style doesn’t quite land when stretched out to a feature-length film since that novelty of watching an animated motion comic-esque production starts to wear off after a while.
The film does have some strong ideas (e.g. a time-looped scenario controlled by godlike beings betting on the outcome) and has a solid voice cast who equip themselves well in the roles. Dani Lennon provides some much-needed vulnerability and nuance to the main role, while both Ray Wise and Morena Baccarin provide some solid voice work in their respective roles, though why William Shatner is here to provide some rather superfluous narration is beyond me. However, despite those positives, the movie never fully does justice to all of its ideas and characters. As the film progresses, we learn more about our central heroine and her relationships with her estranged siblings and her diabolical father, but the movie never attempts to go further with its characterisation so the emotional investment is never fully there. As for the sheer amounts of blood and gore, it’s pretty extreme but never shocked this particular viewer considering that it’s all drawings and not live-action.
In the end, To Your Last Death is decent at best, but not much more than that. It’s a serviceable action/horror flick that passes the time perfectly fine, the artwork is striking and the voice cast do an acceptable job, but it never attempts to be much more than it already is and done as a feature-length motion comic, you do start to notice the limitations after a while.
Dir: Jason Axinn
Scr: Jim Cirile, Tanya C. Klein
Cast: Morena Baccarin, Ray Wise, Bill Moseley, William Shatner, Dani Lennon
Prd: Jim Cirile, Tanya C. Klein, Cindi Rice, Jason Axinn, Paige Barnett, Lawrence Lee Wallace, Brian Confer, Nick Ford, Bill Gammon, Philip Landa, Ed Murphy, Nefertiti Thoma
Music: René G. Boscio
Country: US
Year: 2020
Runtime: 91 mins
To Your Last Death is available on digital now and will be out on Blu-ray from 6th Oct
