Any good Giallo is worth its weight in alternate names. Profondo rosso, for example, was released as The Hatchet Murders, Dripping Deep Red and, most popularly, Deep Red in the United States. The Red Queen Kills Seven Times was also known as Blood Feast and The Corpse Which Didn’t Want to Die, among other names. It’s a minor bit of trivia that’s meaningless to the actual films in question, but it’s one of the many ways, intentional or not, in which Al morir la matinée also shares its lineage with those Italian greats as it’s already also known as Red Screening and The Last Matinee as its made its way through film festivals. Regardless of what it’s called, though, the truth is that this Uruguayan neo-giallo is a phenomenal modern entry in the cult classic subgenre.

Set in 1993 in Montevideo, Uruguay, The Last Matinee opens with a beautiful tracking shot that coasts over a bay, through a smokestack before ultimately settling on a red car moving through the maze-like streets of the city. Immediately, the film grabs the attention as the score by Hernán González pulses in the background and stylishly ties its beats to the credits as they hit the screen. It’s an assured opening that lets the viewer know they’re in good, leather-clad hands. It continues ominously, the camera focused inside the car on the bottom half of a man’s face as he eats pickled treats out of a jar filled with vinegar. Outside, the rain pours down in foreboding torrents. The man pulls down the hood of his rain slicker, reaches over to his glove box and takes out the infamous black leather gloves fans of gialli know and love.

He’s parked in front of a theatre that’s about to show its last film of the night, a real life film anachronistically from 2011 called Frankenstein: Day of the Beast...directed, interestingly enough, by Ricardo Islas, who also plays the leather-clad man above. The showing is sparsely patronaged with small groups peppered throughout its cavernous auditorium. Towards the front, a couple on a first date have different plans for the night while an older gentleman is situated off to the side. A trio of drunk teens obnoxiously flit in after the film has started while a young kid named Tomas (Franco Duran) has snuck past Mauricio (Pedro Duarte), the usher, to watch the R-rated Frankenstein flick. Meanwhile, Ana (Luciana Grasso) mans the projector to give her ailing father who works ten hours shifts a night off.

As she starts the film, the hooded killer starts to slowly move through the auditorium, picking its members off, one by one.

A wave of recent nostalgia for a time pre-COVID hit immediately, as soon as The Last Matinee unveiled the gargantuan theatre. Marble-looking stairs lead up into the cavernous auditorium that’s big enough to have a balcony and is filled with those classic red seats those old enough to remember the 90s might remember fondly. The smell of stale popcorn and the feeling of sticky floors emanated from the screen in such a powerful fashion that I realized, at risk of making this sentiment obsolete as we hopefully return to some semblance of normal soon, how much I missed the theatrical experience. Even if there’s a killer who takes disturbing souvenirs lurking about.

Nostalgia aside, The Last Matinee does a phenomenal job of making it seem possible that a killer could move unseen through the auditorium, plucking his victims one by one and murdering them in gory and creative ways. The theatre is so large and spacious and the viewing so empty that it feels possible. Written by Maximiliano Contenti (also the director) and Manuel Facal, The Last Matinee really commits to its “slasher in a theater” maxim and delivers on the gory kills, one of which, in particular, had me grimacing in pain. It’s also filled with enough blood and eye torture to make Fulci proud.

But the best part of the film is how it's filmed and edited. The zooms on eyes is a nice touch, sure, but The Last Matinee knows how to craft an excellent sequence that feels just meta enough to be intriguing. One nicely edited sequence shows one of the drunken teens finding love with a mystery girl in the theatre and begin kissing. The first date couple, meanwhile, get a bit more heavy-handed in their heavy petting, all while the audience watches a violent moment on the in-movie film. And as the sequence builds to a crescendo of sight and sound, the horror on screen matches with the two pairs making out, it ends in one’s climax and the other’s literal impalement.

The Last Matinee stages sequences like this with such assurance that it becomes more than a pastiche or homage to the gialli that came before. It stands on its own bloody two feet and becomes its own thrilling and incredibly gory entry in the storied subgenre. Highly recommended.