Main cast: Alyssa Limperis (Violet Fields), Will Wheldon (Jimmy Rhodes), Mary Lynn Rajskub (Gina Obispo), Jack De Sena (David Zeller), Brooks Wheelan (Chase Morrow), and Ron Lynch (Bob Devore)
Director: DW Thomas
Violet Fields has always wanted to be a stand-up comedian, but she’s trapped in an increasingly disadvantageous bargain. While she books comedians for her club, her main gig is booking for the Too Late with Bob Devore show. There is a catch: Bob is actually a monster that feeds on comedians, and he has Violet luring the comedians she books into a private audience with him after the show, during which Bob of course gets his dinner. The problem really comes to a head when she develops a romance with comedian Jimmy Rhodes, and guess what, Bob has him marked for his next meal.
Too Late is a low budget film that is well produced more than many of its ilk. The premise is intriguing, but unfortunately, this is one movie that has no build up or climax. No, really, the pacing of the entire movie is like a flat line from start to finish. Things meander around, never becoming funny or scary like the horror comedy this one wants desperately to be, and then, the movie ends on a limp note and that’s it. I’m not sure whether it’s due to botched screenplay or direction, but this movie is just way too placid and slow even when it is supposed to lurching to some kind of grand finale.
The cast is pretty flat too, aside from Ron Lynch. The lead characters are dull and one-note, and I find it hard to care about Violet when she seems so disinterested even when weird crap is happening. That’s the problem with the rest of the cast too: they all seem bewilderingly calm when sane people would be freaking out. This may work if the whole thing had been an absurd comedy, but the humor here never really hits home. One-liners are lame and few, or maybe there are more and they just fly over me because they are really that bad. Violet leads people to their death, and she claims in the end that she deserves to be punished for her sins, but the movie doesn’t really do anything of that sort—Violet gets off easy and gets a happy ending. So, why even make her bring up feeling remorseful when she’s not going to be punished even a bit for her actions? It is really hard to care about this movie because, in the end, nothing really matters.
Ron Lynch steals the scene and chews scenery with his role, but again, Bob Devore is one-note like everything else in this movie. What is he? Who knows, don’t care. His chow time scenes are obscured, likely because of budget reasons, and really, there is nothing here remotely scary or gory. Bob Devore’s the best thing about this movie, but that’s because the monster seems to emote far more humanly than the actual humans in this movie.
Too Late could have been so much better, maybe with a better script and a better bulk of the cast. While some indie horror movies flail around due to limited budget, this one is completely opposite: the production values are fine, but the script and the cast could use a do-over.
