Slasher-horror being a universal language (maybe they should try it in the United Nations), Uruguayan filmmaker Maximiliano Contenti's feature should attract the gorehound crowd here despite the Spanish dialogue. And, admittedly, this is a not-bad item for the post-modern Scream end of the disreputable genre. Hideous gore makes it an acquired taste, but we've seen worse. Believe it or not.
The setting is a single-screen movie house in downtown Montevideo on a rather gloomy afternoon in 1993 (posters are heavy with dinosaur and robot-cop blockbusters). The afternoon show is an English-language Frankenstein horror picture that has attracted only a meager, motley smattering of patrons—including a burly maniac in a long black coat and hood, with a sackful of lethal tools.
During the movie (it may be of interest that the plot takes place more or less in real-time) the killer seals the exits and begins to murder the small staff and the filmgoers, with a sickening, sadistic appetite revealed only belatedly (otherwise there is really no explanation for the rampage). Among the last to realize the danger is a young woman projectionist (Luciana Grasso), an engineering student substituting in the old-style analog-projection booth for her aged father.
The iffy-looking film-within-the-film Frankenstein: Day of the Beast is actually a real feature (from 2011 though, not 1993), shot in the USA by another Uruguay horror auteur, Ricardo Islas. The easy cheap shot here would be to say that Frankenstein: Day of the Beast looks superior to The Last Matinee, but...actually, no it doesn't.
Contenti puts the grisly narrative together with a sure hand and a feel for the grand Guignol stuff, nice use of sound, and scattered bits of humor to set off the shocks. Nonetheless, roundabout the one-hour mark the gruesome bloodletting and minimal plot start to drag, and excessive use of slo-mo for climactic action scenes does not help. Besides the carnage, collections may want to be aware of a (fully clothed) sex scene. But, as noted above, we've seen worse. Optional. Aud: P.