After spending the last 20 years writing and directing massive blockbusters during his stints at Netflix and Warner Bros., Zack Snyder is now going small-scale with a decades-long passion project: his first independent feature, The Last Photograph. I was curiously optimistic not just by its last-minute addition to the TIFF 2026 lineup, but also because Snyder himself is a pretty affable guy.
He’s a filmmaker I find to be extremely hit or miss, but his hits are impressively crafted pieces of popcorn. As much as I don’t like Batman v Superman or his Rebel Moon films, I have fun with his two zombie flicks, Army of the Dead and the Dawn of the Dead remake; plus I was surprised by how much I loved the infamous Snyder Cut of Justice League. My previous optimism would soon be dashed as The Last Photograph revealed itself to be an arduous slog that’s not just the worst I’ve seen at the fest this year, I would go so far as to say it’s Snyder’s worst film period.
The film starts off in chaos, where a birthday party held in an unnamed South American country is invaded by a militia, murdering an American diplomat and nearly everyone else in attendance. The only survivor is heroin-addicted war photographer Joe Wallace (Fra Fee), who managed to take a picture of the massacre just as the diplomat’s wife was killed.
“The Last Photograph is a film about very mature topics delivered in the most extreme, immature way possible.”
The photo of the killings makes its way to the diplomat’s brother, former DEA agent Ethan Black (Stuart Martin). Spurred to action by the loss of his sister-in-law—with whom they were having an affair—Ethan flies to South America and hires Joe to not only help identify the killers but also to rescue his kidnapped niece and nephew.
Where things go immediately wrong for The Last Photograph starting in that opening sequence, which includes an awkward sex scene between Joe and a waitress, is immediately followed by on-screen killings of children. Sure it gives the intended shock, but it’s the first of many moments of extreme violence throughout that don’t land beyond that shock value. It ends up being a repeating cycle of the two men going into a new village, a shootout where Ethan kills dozens of people without a sweat, their escape, a sequence of Joe doing heroin, rinse and repeat.
The only breaks from this are the repeated flashbacks after Ethan looks back at the titular last photograph: a topless photo of his sister-in-law taken after the last of their numerous hookups. That’s about the extent we get of any of the few female characters in the film. Even the brother is a complete non-issue.
Kurt Johnstad’s script gives us very little reason to care about these two protagonists, and what little we do know comes largely from the pair telling each other the film’s themes. Yes, Ethan and Joe are two broken men searching for some form of retribution through this revenge quest, but the film spells that out in an incredibly heavy-handed way over and over again. The quiet moments are just as clunky, with brooding repeatedly mistaken for interiority.
“There’s one particular sequence in The Last Photograph showcasing Ethan’s perception as a saviour to some of the villagers that is downright laughable in its execution.”
There’s one particular sequence in The Last Photograph showcasing Ethan’s perception as a saviour to some of the villagers that is downright laughable in its execution. Hell, Joe’s desensitization to violence through photography is an idea that was already explored with far more depth two years ago in Alex Garland’s Civil War. It doesn’t help that both Martin and Fee, who look like dollar-store versions of Hugh Jackman and Kit Harington respectively, give woefully dull performances throughout the film.
While The Last Photograph may be shot in gorgeous Colombian landscapes, Snyder’s recent insistence of being his own cinematographer (an idea that only worked well in Army) makes nearly the entire film look bad; if it isn’t a shot of a beautiful landscape, everything else is shot in extremely shallow depth of field, and the film looks shockingly dull, especially for someone as visually striking as Snyder typically is. That even goes for the aforementioned action sequences, none of which are even thrilling or even interesting. Rather, I just felt numb to the entire experience very quickly.
As much as I respect Snyder attempting to be a more mature filmmaker, it’s clear that the story he’s attempting to tell is out of his depth. The Last Photograph is a film about very mature topics delivered in the most extreme, immature way possible. Before the movie started, Snyder joked that he may burn the film after the screening. I firmly believe that any movie should have its day, but if he can’t massively re-edit it, he may not have the wrong idea.
