Director of Wrath of the Viper Sniper Clay Moffatt brings us into a world of horror with his new film The Last 5 Days: The Freak Building.
Through found footage and interviews, we learn of Verbin and his demonic fruit. The film takes a mockumentary style approach to the narrative, telling the story through the ill-fated discovery made by night shift security guard Jacob (Clay Moffatt). Alongside Moffatt, writer Adam Berardi curates the eerie backstory to the film with an excellent attention to detail. They could have chosen to dive right in to the demonic story and tell it in the first person as events unfolded. Instead, they have chosen a more complex approach, framing the events inside of a documentary. The longer exposition works well to build tension for the horror that awaits in the found footage. The interviews also give a sense of reality that leaves a definite discomfort in the back of your mind. Adam Berardi as Detective Sanchez, Ashley Moffatt as Sarah Larson and Elise Moffatt as Wanda X all provide extra depth and intrigue.
We join Jacob on his last nightshift at an establishment that is closing down. He swears there are strange and unusual happenings in the building, but when he checks the CCTV footage, the things that go bump in the night all appear to be part of his imagination. On his last shift, Jacob takes his own camera in an attempt to capture some of the paranormal activity that has been haunting the periphery of his consciousness. While there are strange noises rattling round the old building, Jacob discovers much more than things that go bump in the night.
There’s a great deal of variation in the visual storytelling. We go from shaky hand held footage shot by Jacob to a third person view of him wandering around. These shots feel almost as though they are from the eyes of some beast that is watching him. A particularly scary use of creative cinematography and lighting is the scenes where Jacob holds a torch and the camera so that only a small circle is illuminated on the screen at once. The restrictive view feels claustrophobic which results in an underlying sense of anxiety in the viewer.
What Jacob discovers turns him into nothing short of a demonic being. A fruit grows within the building he patrols, and after eating this fruit things begin to unravel very quickly. Here Moffatt flexes skills in special effects, especially the gory kind. Spitting blood and teeth, Jacob becomes possessed by the demonic Verbin who uses his body as a host. Moffatt’s performance in this role is highly commendable. He is deeply unsettling and extremely convincing in his possession by something beyond this realm. Some of the scenes are so traumatic you want to look away. And yet you can’t.
A gory masterpiece from start to end with excellent editing, cinematography and performances.