Critics Score Zack Snyder’s New Movie Worse Than ‘Rebel Moon’

Director Zack Snyder is almost exclusively known for his big blockbuster films, whether those involve zombies, superheroes or Star Wars-ish epics. His new film, The Last Photograph, was meant to be a more grounded tale for a change. However, after airing at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival, it is being absolutely torched by critics at a level rarely seen.

Here’s the synopsis of The Last Photograph:

“An ex-DEA operative searches the South American mountains for his missing niece and nephew after their parents are murdered. With the help of a war photographer who witnessed the killers, he confronts his past as their journey blurs the line between reality and the surreal.”

So, that’s pretty Apocalypse Now at baseline, but clearly did not produce the same result. A full 25% of the ratings for The Last Photograph on Letterboxd are half a star, though it’s too early for the film to have something like a Rotten Tomatoes score yet. It will not be high.

It’s not just that critics and viewers don’t like the film; they are going out of their way to be especially brutal to it. Here are some of the comments:

• DawsBear – “ZACK SNYDER’S “THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH” is grotesque, shameless and an utter disgrace from start to finish. It is Snyder at his most unfiltered, with no studio intervention and is the film’s largest problem. It’s desperate to be Snyder’s ‘Civil War’, but feels like Daily Wire slop…”
• Elizabeth Mulloy – “Put Zack Snyder in directors jail permanently. THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH is dogshit. It’s aimless, contrived, misogynistic, convoluted, messy, overtly long, abysmal, repetitive, slow, shallow, and downright awful. Only positive- it looked pretty”
• Jason Gorber – “THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH – Zach Snyder’s abortion of a film is one of the worst to ever play this festival. APOCALYPSE NO. Just unabashedly shit on every level, an exercise in incompetence and hubris, and an embarrassment to have been screened.”
• NextBestPicture – “I’m sure Zack Snyder believes he’s made something far more profound and artful than his previous work with THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH, and in some ways, he has. Unfortunately, it’s still a tedious, frustrating, and grueling experience. Easily the worst film I’ve seen at TIFF so far.”

It’s also called the worst film of Snyder’s career, if that wasn’t clear from the above. Rebel Moon Parts 1 and 2 may have been disliked by critics but never at this level. You can check those Letterboxd reviews, where even though the curve skews low for both, the fact that the highest number of ratings The Last Photograph has are 0.5 stars is almost impressively bad.

So, when will audiences get to see The Last Photograph? Well, that depends. It is at least theoretically possible it’s never released, something Snyder himself reportedly joked about. It doesn’t have a distributor yet and getting one may prove challenging, clearly. Or, if it is released, it stands to reason that the film could have a different cut that attempts to change some of the aspects that drew the most criticism. Snyder obviously has a cult-like following, though that is mostly limited to his DCEU movies, and few were going to bat for Rebel Moon. The Last Photograph? That would likely put even his most devoted followers to the test, it seems.

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