Final Draft (2007)
Picture: C
Sound: C Extras: D Film: D
Jonathan Dueck’s Final
Draft (2007) is a tale about a writer who goes mad and may be on a killing
spree. Sounds familiar? James Van Der Beek is the screenplay writer
who is having writer’s block this time and unfortunately, Darryn Lucio (who
wrote this film) did not, or we would not have this monument to silly
predictability. Not only have we seen
the angle before of characters/persons from other worlds being called in to
help in the original Rod Serling Twilight
Zone, the general premise of the film worked much better when Stanley
Kubrick did it as The Shining and
Paul Verhoeven did it as Basic Instinct.
Of course, when one thinks of Van Der Beek, you
automatically think Jack Nicholson or Sharon Stone? I doubt it.
This mess
can be gore-filled, but never suspenseful or convincing. Most important though, this proves once again
that Van Der Beek cannot carry a feature length anything and is an actor of
very limited range who got lucky and is now coasting on the nostalgia of his
name. Despite the gore, this is not a
risk-taking project of any sort, the kind he needs to challenge him. Instead, the tile might refer to the end of
many mugs of beer it will take to find this even barely compelling.
The 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image is so weak and
color challenged that Mick Reynolds overly slick work only looks worse and the
bad editing does not help either. The Dolby
Digital 5.1 mix is very weak ands spreads out the sound very, very thin from
what was obviously a very low budget production. The combination is lousy and often hard to
sit through. Extras include a making of
featurette and some Music Video.
Finally, the tagline on the DVD case says “Some stories
should never be written…”
How true!
- Nicholas Sheffo
