Studio: Shout Studios
Director: Alan Scott Neal
Writer: Taylor Sardoni
Producer: Dane Eckerle, Daniel Brandt, Cole Eckerle
Stars: Jessica Belkin, Taylor Kowalski, Glen Gould, Joji Otani-Hansen, Chris Lopes, Michael Giannone, Tara Raani, Jeremy Sisto
Review Score:
Summary:
Masked intruders terrorize a diner waitress working the late shift, but their real identities expose a grislier crime.
Review:
"Last Straw" doesn't just get off on the wrong foot. It limps out of the gate on both legs, totaling two wrong feet that come one right after another.
On the left foot, "Last Straw" begins near the end of its story before restarting with "24 Hours Earlier" text. It can be argued that the grisly sight of unidentified bodies lying on a greasy spoon floor isn't much of a spoiler. Viewers are likely coming in aware that the premise involves a diner waitress dealing with deadly intruders during a late shift. A better argument can be made that the scene serves the purpose of putting a particular person in a specific position, although whether anyone actually registers the spoken name seems iffy. Regardless, opening on an unnecessary flash forward is only marginally less cliche than opening on a jump scare stinger where an unseen villain attacks before cutting to a title card.
With its other foot, "Last Straw" presents a heroine who isn't particularly heroic. Discounting her bloodied body in the prologue, we first meet Nancy as she's pulling up her pants along the side of a remote road. Either she really had to go anyway and decided to kill two birds with one stone, or she specifically pulled over to pee on a pregnancy test. Whatever the reason, she tosses the stick on the ground and takes off to join her friend in smoking a joint, something a newly pregnant person probably shouldn't be doing. In between tokes, Nancy nonchalantly talks about "killing it" while recounting the three nameless one-night stands who could possibly be the father. So far, there isn't a whole lot of character to this character.
Nancy's personality doesn't improve once she finally arrives at Fat Bottom Bistro, a roadside restaurant owned by her father Edward, played by Jeremy Sisto in what must have been a favor for a friend, because his brief scenes don't require a recognizable actor at all. Nancy gets into an argument with dad about having to work when she was planning on attending a party. She gets goaded into being casually condescending to a coworker with Down Syndrome. Acting on unrelated frustrations, she fires the head cook for talking back to her. Not done alienating everyone quite yet, Nancy then insults the "good guy" employee who biked her to work when her car broke down by insisting he is "never gonna get with" her. What are we supposed to like about Nancy?
Things aren't looking good for "Last Straw" by the time Nancy gets left alone overnight to be terrified by four masked figures. We're not quite a full 30 minutes in, yet we're staring down the barrel of a problematic protagonist in a standard home invasion situation that has simply traded the home for a diner.
Around the halfway point in the runtime, after bodies begin dropping and Nancy has been sufficiently terrorized, everything pauses for a flashback. This flashback fills in a 20-minute blank by introducing a twist that's partly predictable, but it's not the reveal that really matters. More important is how the movie uses this development to reset its narrative so there is finally compelling context to what was otherwise shaping up to be standard slashing and Final Girl frights.
Sadly, commending the actor by name could constitute a spoiler, but there's a striking performance in this sequence that delivers distinctly dark drama. "Last Straw" takes on a different tone during this "timeout," and sets itself up for a stronger second half once we know who's playing this cat-and-mouse game with Nancy, why, and what the stakes are.
While the nonlinear narrative enables "Last Straw" to create suspense by toying with chronology, this structure simultaneously weakens a couple of characterizations, not the least of which is Nancy. One final flashback before end credits depicts a reflective scene from before Nancy arrived at the diner. It's one of the only scenes capable of earning her sympathy and yet, unlike the unmasking moment and first temporary trip back in time, it's placed at the wrong point in the movie to get its job done.
Not quite a case of "too little, too late," it's more so that the arrangement of "Last Straw's" story causes the movie to be bit by its own teeth. A gripping, occasionally gruesome horror movie pops through more often than not. But it's hard not to think a better heroine and a little more linearity might have earned "Last Straw" another full star. In its current condition, I'm just not sure what the final fate will ever realistically be for an average thriller whose 80 minutes are too short for a cable TV timeslot where it would earn more eyes, and isn't noticeable enough to stand out on a streaming service's crowded queue.
Review Score: 60
It’s hard not to think a better heroine and a little more linearity might have earned “Last Straw” another full star.