"Final Girl Vengeance" a.k.a. "Survival Knife"

I caught "Final Girl Vengeance" (previously titled "Survival Knife") on Amazon Prime.  And I'll be honest, the main reason this one was on my radar is because of actress Danielle Donahue. I had seen her in other films, such as "Jurassic Prey" and "Bigfoot vs Zombies", and while I enjoy the campy nuttiness of monster movies like that, I was curious about how she would do in a more serious role.  Something told me she could pull it off and I was happy to find out that I was correct in that assessment.

It was sort of like when I had the luck to work with Debbie Rochon on "The Lunar Pack", "Death Plots" and "All Wrapped Up".  She was spectacularly fun as the hostess Mistress Misty, but I knew I was wasting her true talent, so I wrote "Savaged", a movie that squarely put all of the emotion and tension on her capable shoulders.  Her co-star was my dog, Valkrie Liquori and they actually worked amazingly well together over a four day shoot.  (Yep, four days of principal photography for a feature film).

Cover Art with the original title, "Survival Knife"

One thing I think that may disappoint some viewers is that "Final Girl Vengeance" isn't a straight horror film.  It opens with a horror sequence, involves a serial killer called "The Survivalist" and has flash backs to some truly horrific situations, but the movie as a whole is a psychological thriller and character study.  Fortunately, the character we are focused on is Penny Warren, played by Donahue.  I say "fortunately", because out of the whole cast, Donahue is the only one who really shines.  The rest of the performances range from pretty good down to "in the wrong movie".  There are a few cast members who clearly didn't have the time or take the effort to prepare for their shoot days and it takes the viewer out of the moment.  While I usually forgive this in a campy creature feature, because I'm watching for the monster, in a character driven movie like this, it can really break the pace.

Try to press through those moments though.  Penny Warren has a lot of screen time to herself and a few scenes dealing with her own Lois Lane type reporter, who just won't let things go, played by Kaitlyn Shoeb.  These moments and an interaction with a police detective are when the best acting happens.  If you can concentrate on those you'll be able to appreciate the plot of the movie.

There are also those moments of horror I spoke of earlier.  They can be brutal at times.  The blood and gore is mostly average, but there is some  excellent make-up for Penny as she heals as well as a kill toward the final act of the film that is truly inspired.

The movie does suffer from the usual pitfalls of  low budget films.  The sound is uneven and at times just plain bad. Keep an eye out for a scene in a "gentleman's club" that is completely subtitled, but nobody actually seems to be speaking the lines you're reading.  It's an interesting way to handle not having control over the audio for the day.

The location work is amazing at times.  An "abandoned steel mill", the aforementioned club, the doctor's office, police station, and even characters' apartments are all on point.  The steel mill location is perfect for this type of movie.  Very "Robo Cop" meets "Nightmare on Elm Street".

In the end, enjoying "Final Girl Vengeance" comes down to accepting that it may not be the horror film  you expected, while still being horrific at times and getting past its obvious shortcomings in order to enjoy its strengths.

Oh, one of those shortcomings, for me, was the score.  It was super repetitive.  I know, for the director of "Shelter" to say that is pretty bold, but it got annoying right from the opening scene.  I had nearly forgotten how much it annoyed me it until I searched for the trailer.