Movie Review: LAST STRAW

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: September 27th, 2024 / 03:56 AM

LAST STRAW movie poster | ©2024 Shout! Studios

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Jessica Belkin, Taylor Kowalski. Glen Gould, Joji Otani-Hansen, Chris Lopes, Michael Giannone, Tara Raani, Jeremy Sisto
Writer: Taylor Sardoni
Director: Alan Scott Neal
Distributor: Shout! Studios
Release Date: September 20, 2024 (theatrical, VOD, digital)

There are moments when LAST STRAW seems to be a STRANGERS movie, but turns out to be something a little different and more ambitious. With only a few wait-a-second logic gaps, it holds up pretty well as a physical/psychological thriller.

We start with a flash-forward to an isolated roadside diner, where there’s blood everywhere and some bodies on the floor. We get a playback of a 9-1-1 call by a young man, saying he’s come upon the scene and he thinks his friend Nancy is dying.

We then flash back to twenty-four hours earlier. Nineteen-year-old Nancy (Jessica Belkin) is taking a DIY pregnancy test. It’s positive. She confides in her friend Tabitha (Tara Raani), but not in her father Edward ((Jeremy Sisto).

Nancy’s car breaks down on the way to the diner. Her co-worker Bobby (Joji Otani-Hansen) gives her a lift on his bicycle.

Edward owns the Fat Bottom Diner, where he’s made Nancy the manager. Bobby is one of the staff members, a nice-guy kid. From the way Nancy pretends to have been so blackout drunk that she doesn’t remember their hookup, we can deduce Bobby (who Nancy doesn’t inform) is likely responsible for the pregnancy.

Other diner staff include Jake (Taylor Kowalski), who is on medication for an unspecified psychiatric condition, and Jake’s brother Petey (Chris Lopes), who has Down’s Syndrome, plus a couple of other young men.

As Nancy is late and Edward has personal business that evening, Edward decrees that his daughter will work a double shift that lasts until morning. Jake and Petey will work with her, since they don’t require overtime pay. Bobby offers to work for free, but Nancy refuses.

When the diner parking lot is invaded by four aggressive youths on mopeds, Nancy chases them off. The gang returns shortly thereafter, now wearing masks, crowd into a booth and demands service. Nancy winds up calling the sheriff’s department. The gang leaves, but their leader promises to return.

In the aftermath of the incident, tensions in the diner are high. Jake confronts Nancy in front of the rest of the staff and declares that she handled it badly, and follows up with his opinion (probably not expressed for the first time) that she’s unqualified to be manager. Nancy spontaneously decides to exercise her managerial power and fires Jake on the spot.

This, of course, leaves Nancy alone at the diner after dark. And then she learns that a gang of masked moped riders was seen in proximity to a horrible multiple murder in town …

Except this doesn’t play out quite the way we expect. Neither does the structure of Taylor Sardoni’s LAST STRAW script, which has a few real twists.

Director Alan Scott Neal works up a sense of commendable dread, using pools of darkness to his advantage and employing a variety of visual perspectives to keep us on our toes. He also elicits very believable performances from his actors, with especially noteworthy turns from Belkin, Kowalski, Otani-Hansen, and Lopes.

There are arguably a few too many flashbacks to remind us of statements and moments we remember already. We also wonder why the sheriff himself, as opposed to a deputy, responds to what is assumed to be a minor nuisance call.

But these are minor complaints. Mostly, LAST STRAW succeeds in putting a new swirl or two in its effective take on its horror subgenre.

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