Most of the time there’s not too many surprises during the reading of the will. Most families have a clue what’s being left for them. There are those drastic moments when people show up and discover they’ve been either completely left out or stuck with an overdue credit card bill. But if you were close to your relative, they’ve at some point tipped you off what they want you to have of their worldly possessions. But what if your dad invites you and your siblings over so he can set things up for his last will and testament? That’s exactly what goes wrong at the start of To Your Last Death, an animated film about family mayhem.
Miriam DeKalb (Dani Lennon) is doing her best to help children in war torn countries. But her speech in front of a United Nations commission goes bad when they remind her that her father Cyrus DeKalb (Twin Peaks‘s Ray Wise) is a large producer of military weapons. Her charity is also hitting a wall as they lose one of their major backers. Things are looking bleak until she gets a message from her dad to join her and her siblings. The dad confesses to his four children that he’s dying. But instead of an emotional bonding moment, Dad lets them know that all four of his children have been massive disappointments and he’s going to torture and eliminate them so they’ll be dead before him. The rich man has his goon Pavel (Devil’s Rejects‘ Bill Mosley) to kill his kids in gruesome ways. The only one who escapes their bloody torture mechanism is Miriam. But the cops find her and think she chopped everyone up since she’s covered in blood and holding a bloody axe. While in the hospital Miriam discovers her dad’s assistant Morena Baccarin (Deadpool) has the ability to send her back in time and see if she can save her siblings. Can she keep her family together and not chopped up into little pieces?
To Your Last Death is a brutal film with plenty of carnage. I’m curious if they made a live action version would they use as much fake blood as they used buckets of red paint to splatter the screen. William Shatner voices the narration in the film that keeps things within this world that has a reset ability. The animation has a similar technique as used in Archer with the characters bending a bit on the screen. Ray Wise has a bit of fun with his voice as the frustrated father comes up with nasty torture devices that are supposed to “fix” his children before they get snapped into pieces. The mixing of horror with the science fiction angle of the power wielded by the dad’s assistant makes To Your Last Death a repeatedly gruesome film until we get the final words from Shatner.
The video is 1.78:1 anamorphic. The 1080p transfer will let you see all the bloodspatter when the axes and chainsaws get digging. The audio is 5.1 DTS-HD MA. You’ll get to fill the room with Shatner’s narrative tones. The movie is subtitled.
Trailer of the animated mayhem.
Quiver Distribution & Coverage, Ink present To Your Last Death. Directed by: Jason Axinn. Screenplay by: Jim Cirile & Tanya C. Klein. Starring: William Shatner, Morena Baccarin, Ray Wise, Bill Moseley, Dani Lennon, Florence Hartigan, Damien Haas, Ben Siemon and Mark Whitten. Running Time: 92 minutes. Released: October 6, 2020.
