The Last Kiss (2026) Review: A Teen Horror With Bite

Laurel, played by Mckenna Grace, has spent years daydreaming about her first kiss. When it finally happens with Evan Geller (Jaden Michael), the fantasy curdles instantly: she sees his death, vivid and violent. Worse, it isn't random. A killer is working through her circle of friends one by one, and every kiss gives Laurel another puzzle piece she didn't ask for.

The screenplay wisely keeps the rules of the curse vague enough to sustain mystery but firm enough to matter. Each vision is a clue, not a cheat. As her friends Poppy (Arkira Chantaratananond), Tyler (Riley Davis), and Bree (Eve Edwards) get pulled into the orbit of the killings, Laurel has to decide how many people she's willing to kiss to save them. It's a premise that could collapse into absurdity. Okumura keeps it grounded in Laurel's escalating guilt.

Grace anchors the film with a performance that's all held breath and widening eyes. She's been doing excellent work for years, and this is some of her best. The curse forces her to flinch away from intimacy at the exact age when intimacy is everything, and Grace plays that conflict without a whiff of melodrama. Chantaratananond is a standout as Poppy, the best friend who gets the film's sharpest dialogue and its most wrenching scene.

Okumura, working from a script that respects its own clock, directs with restraint. The kills are staged with an eye for what's offscreen. A shadow in a doorway. A hand that shouldn't be there. The film's violence lands harder because Okumura withholds it until the moment it matters. The score does some heavy lifting, maybe too much in the middle stretch, but the sound design is genuinely unsettling. That said, the mystery mechanics creak in the final act. The killer's identity is revealed with a monologue that explains more than it dramatizes, and one late twist feels engineered for a gasp rather than a payoff. It's not enough to sink the movie, but it does blunt the knife.

Pros

• Mckenna Grace's committed, emotionally precise lead performance
• Okumura's restraint: scares built from suggestion, not spectacle
• A genuinely clever central premise that the film mostly earns
• Strong supporting turn from Arkira Chantaratananond
• Tight 97-minute runtime with almost no dead weight

Cons

• The third-act reveal leans on exposition over drama
• One twist lands as a shock without real setup
• The score occasionally overplays scenes that were already working
• A few side characters, including Kate Drummond's Diane and the ranger subplot, feel underdeveloped

The Last Kiss understands something most horror films aimed at younger audiences forget: the terror of being a teenager is already about bodies, trust, and the fear that everyone you love is temporary. Okumura's film takes that anxiety and gives it teeth, then lets Mckenna Grace carry it home. The ending doesn't quite stick the landing, and the mystery's final turn is more efficient than elegant, but this is a confident, well-acted, and genuinely creepy piece of work from a director with a clear voice. In a crowded fall season, it's worth the kiss.