LAST STRAW (2023)

3 stars

Blue Finch Film Releasing. Digital Platforms. 23rd September

The film opens at a diner. Music is playing on the jukebox. The body of a waitress – who we soon learn is Nancy (Jessica Belkin) – is on the floor. Jake Collins (Taylor Kowalski) has just come in and sees blood everywhere. A 911 emergency call: ‘I think my friend is dieing’

Spin back to 24 hours earlier (a familiar device in horror movies). Nancy has just taken a pregnancy test. Discarding it we see it is positive. She shares this news with her friend Tabitha. She doesn’t know who the father is.

Driving along she gets a flat – can her day get any worse? She decides to walk to work until Bobby (Joji Otani-Hansen), her sort of boyfriend, comes along on his pedal bike. They arrive at the diner.

She is the manager at the bizarrely name Fat Bottom Bistro – her Dad owns the place. To add to her already great day, he tells she is working the night shift… with Jake who she calls The Freak. Her Dad has date and he sees Jake as a trusted employee. She is less enamoured with him.

A group of four locals come into the diner in Halloween masks – Nancy demands they leave and calls the police, so they eventually depart, but one of them threatens to come back later. Annoyed that the staff didn’t support her she fires Jake and says she’ll do the night shift on her own. Stuck their alone… not the best idea!

The diner is empty – then there is a knock at the door. More banging on the windows. She locks the door and phones the cops. The phone goes dead…the power goes out. She can’t find her phone. Thus begins a night of terror.

Debuting director Alan Scott Neal, better known as a casting director, is working from a script by Taylor Sardoni, which, in attempt to be clever, has narrative which messes around with the timeline of what is happening, going back to show the events from different perspectives – this doesn’t entirely work and makes for a sometimes confusing viewing experience. However the director keeps things rattling along with some grisly violence to enliven things. A variation on the home invasion scenario, it makes good use of the location, with it’s big windows making Nancy especially vulnerable. The biggest asset here is the feisty Jessica Belkin, playing a character who is both fearful but also resourceful and determined enough to take care of herself. There is good electronic soundtrack by Alan Palomo.

Steve Kirkham