Rent The Last Inn (2021)

First out! - The Last Inn review by NP

While watching this, my heart went out to Emily Hall, who plays Laura. She gives a decent performance considering all the things working against her – namely, her appalling dialogue, unfathomable dubbing (from American into American), the stone-dead pacing, derivative storyline and the performances of all of those around her. Oh, and the ballad accompanying the longed-for finale 100 minutes later.

There is a scene towards the end of ‘The Last Inn’ involving a priest explaining the entire plot (which seems to be cribbed from ‘The Others’), which involves some of the worst acting I have ever seen on film. So bad, it’s as if everyone is emoting through a mechanical speech-generating device.

It’s as though the dialogue and delivery were translated strictly from another language – possibly Chinese, given that the filming took place mainly at Hengdiah film studios. Remember the old Japanese 1970s ‘Godzilla’ films from Toho studios, and how they were often let down by poor dialogue and dubbing? That’s what this reminds me of.

Elsewhere, the cinematography is very good and nicely lit. There is no skimping on the budget either, because some money has clearly been spent on this. That the results are so off-kilter and odd, ensure that it’s a challenge to get to the end, where you can at least get some comfort spotting the spelling errors in the closing credits. Hopefully Emily Hall can put this behind her. My score is 3 out of 10.