Rambo Last Blood is a Horror Movie, Here's Why...
The horror genre seems to be infinitely divisible into multiple sub genres. From psychological horror, body horror and even technological horror, the list seems near endless. At times, by the addition of elements from other genres of film, the horror at times gets cut out. For example many times cosmic and techno horror end up being indistinguishable from their Sci-Fi brethren. Now this is perfectly fine, it just becomes difficult to point your finger and say, “There's a horror movie”.
With these genre lines blurred it gives me the ability to list Rambo Last Blood as the runner up for best horror film of the year. Don’t hate the player. Hate the game.
You may be thinking, how the hell is a Rambo movie a horror movie? Rambo is the quintessential of pure action, surely there is no genre bending. While this is true for all previous entries in the Rambo series, this latest entry blends in elements of horror’s most chilling genres. The rape-revenge horror.
Rape-revenge horror popped up in the exploitation filled world of the 1970’s and most notable entries are The Last House on the Left and I Spit on your Grave. While horror fans would place these directly into the horror genre without question I would ask, why not action? Rape-Revenge horror is nearly indistinguishable from Revenge action, a perfect example would be Death Wish released 2 years after Last House and follows a very similar premise. The only differences between the two are first, the raped is not the revenger. Second, difference in gender of the revenger. Third and probably most important, the weapon used for revenge. Other than that, essentially very similar movies. Why wouldn’t we consider Death Wish as horror? Why wouldn’t we consider Last House as Revenge action. Perhaps I can never answer that question but I can tell you without a doubt, Rambo Last Blood is a rape-revenge horror movie and not a revenge action movie. This is why:
First, in Last Blood, John Rambo’s adoptive daughter travels to Mexico to meet her birth father and there she is kidnapped by hooligans leaving Rambo to track her down and save the day. In action movies this is fairly common, this is essentially what happens in Commando and Taken. The difference in those action films and this horror film is that the hero saves the day killing all the bad guys before anything bad happens. In Taken, Liam Neeson saves his daughter right before she is sold into a life of sexual slavery. In Last Blood, things are not so happy.
John Rambo fails to save his daughter, they are both branded with a giant V carved into their faces and his daughter is forcefully injected with heroin and into a life of prostitution. Rambo saves her on a second attempt by beating guys to death with a hammer but the damage was done and his daughter dies in his arms. If this were an action movie, the hero would have saved the day just before the rape and the heroin. The hero would have been triumphant. The hero would have won. But this is a horror movie and in horror movies the hero loses, everything.
Now that we have established the first necessary piece let’s move onto the second, the revenge. The revenge in Rambo Last Blood is some of the best revenging that’s ever happened and is the element of this film that really pushes it into the horror genre with its absurd amount of gore. When Paul Kersey went out for revenge for his daughter it was with a colt revolver but when John Rambo seeks revenge he travels to Mexico and decapitates one of the cartel brothers to lure the other brother to America. There, on Rambo Ranch, he has a surprise waiting for them. You seen John Rambo has PTSD so he dug miles of tunnels beneath his property and here is where he is going to execute about 100 gang members in his homemade death trap. Think Saw but instead of a Jigsaw doll it was a huge GI Joe. When the gang arrives Rambo rips them to pieces, literally.
There are at least 6 graphic decapitations, 2 by shotgun. He removes numerous arms and legs from bodies in extremely graphic ways with shotguns, C4, machetes and giant spiked poles. All of this is in brutal graphic detail as bodies exploded all over the screen like you were watching the ‘80s Italian Horror Contamination. At times it feels like you are watching a slasher from the POV of the slasher. There is so much over kill, at one point Rambo explodes a man’s head and then pumps about 100 rounds into his lifeless corpse. All of this gore pales in comparison to the shocking finale.
After Rambo has dispatched of what seems like 100 bad guys and is down to just one, the big boss, he blows up the tunnels forcing the villain into Rambo's death barn. Using his expert marksman skills, Rambo pins him up against the wall of the barn with 4 strategically placed arrows. The bloodied and beaten Rambo comes in for some final words, you know, like they do in action movies.
But this isn’t an action movie.
Instead of laying down a cheesy one liner, Rambo takes out his giant Bowie knife and digs it into the villain’s chest, down around the left hand side of the ribs before prying his chest plate open with his bare hands and RIPPING OUT HIS STILL BEATING HEART AND SHOWING IT TO HIM.
Yes. This is a horror movie. Yes it’s one of the best horror movies of 2019. Yes, you should check it out ASAP
5 out of 5. 10 out of 10. Watch it now.
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