Last Straw

Last Straw: Noirish film which segues into horror. We know from the opening scenes that there has been a massacre at a diner, then we go back 24 hours to find out how it came about. Nancy (Jessica Belkin) is having a bad day, she finds out that she's pregnant, her car breaks down on the way to work. When she gets to the diner owned by her father he tells her that she is also going to have to work the night shift (seeing as she is manager) as someone has called in sick. The day gets worse, mask wearing teens on mopeds harass her, bring roadkill into the doner, threaten that they will be back. She argues with the cook, sacks him. Now she will be alone on the night shift. As the night arrives the mask wearers return and freak her out, she calls the cops but the one that arrives is startled when she mentions mopeds. Then the real terror starts. Nothing is ever quite what it seems here as we observe the same scenes replayed from different points of view and more information is elicited. There are quite a few gruesome killings but Nancy isn't just a victim. Meat tenderisers, carving knives and pans of hot oil are quite effective as weapons. The results can be disturbing though and this is not a film for the squeamish. Hampered a bit by it;d low budget it nevertheless makes good use if the diner as a battleground and hunting area. A few interesting plot twists make this a Final Girl film worth watching. Directed by Alan Scott Neal, Written by Taylor Sardoni. 7/10.

After discovering that is pregnant, the waitress of the diner Flat Bottom Bistro Nancy Osborn (Jessica Belkin) drives to work but her old car breaks down and she needs to walk. She gets a bicycle ride from a co-worker and arrives late, and her father Edward Osborn (Jeremy Sisto), who owns the diner, calls her attention since he has just promoted her to manager. He assigns her to the night shift and goes to meet his girlfriend. When a group of masked teenagers driving mopeds arrives at the diner to disturb them with pranks, Nancy pretends to call the police, and the guys leave the place but promise to return later. However, the employees Jake Collins (Taylor Kowalski), his retar.ded brother Petey (Christopher M. Lopes), Bobby (Joji Otani-Hansen), who has a crush on her, and Coop (Michael Giannone) do not help her. They have an argument, and Jake offends Nancy and says that she is the manager only because the diner belongs to her father, and she fires him. During the night, Nancy stays alone and out of the blue, she is scared by masked men. She calls the police, but they are not able to immediately come since they are attending another case, and they believe it is a prank of teenagers. However, Sheriff Brooks (Glen Gould) arrives at the diner to calm Nancy down and does not give much attention to her. But when she mentions the mopeds, the Sheriff immediately asks her to go with him to his car since he has just come from a massacre of teenagers with mopeds. But he is killed by the masked man with a hammer and Nancy runs and hides herself. Who are the killers?

"Last Straw" (2023) is a gore slasher directed by Alan Scott Neal with an interesting screenplay divided basically in two parts. The first part follows Nancy, and the second part follows the crack-addicted killer and his crew and his slaughters. The subplot of the pregnancy of Nancy and the last scene are poor and a waste of time. The special effects with gore are great. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): Not Available.

I would have given this a 7/8 had it not been for the essentially braindead and completely unnecessary last 20 minutes. It's not the worst thing ever so would recommend giving this a view but the end was completely illogical. The acting was good, the story was good but the ending really spoils it. Everything that was built before was 'realistic' as far as a horror movie can be including decisions by characters etc but then they just decided to just mess it up by making the well woven main characters do things that completely takes you out of the movie and say 'wait, why, wtf'. The director could have done really well with this but decided to trope out.

As far as crime-horror-thrillers go...this isn't half bad.

Though, it's quite cliche.

The whole story takes place in, and around, a diner, run by a man and his daughter, in a small town, where oppourtunities aren't exactly omnipresent.

So, when a series of events leads to one of the employees getting fired...things get a little out of control.

Which is to say, an understatement.

As one thing leads to another...and violence ensues.

The whole thing is entertaining enough, but it's certainly not without it's faults.

Because, on top of ruining the mystery far too early...the "twist" is ridiculously implausible.

And kind of ruins the whole last bit of the film.

The film then ends on a note that- while it does make sense- really forces you to dig deep in order to grasp the meaning.

Which I feel flies over most viewers heads.

As it seems, almost randomly, thrown in as the conclusion.

That being said, it's not a horrible film.

Even if you don't "get" the ending...you can still be entertained by the violence-laden journey, in a mindless sort of way.

But it's definitely not great, either.

As, like I mentioned above, I think clarity will elude most viewers.

4 out of 10.

Last Straw'ss story is not entirely unique, there is a simple setup of a home invasion movie but instead of a normal house it's a Diner. Also the movie introduces a few things that I didn't expect but that weren't entirely unpredictable. The main character is flawed and it's a little bit hard to root for her but since she is making it through a very tough time in her life you get where her anger is coming from. But that doesn't explain her extremely stupid decisions throughout the movie. There were multiple scenes where she did something so dumb that a part of me just wanted to see her being killed. I don't mind when characters don't always make the most logical decisions since they are not sitting in front of a screen watching the movie, but instead are in a life threatening situation. But in this case it was really hard to root for her because of her constant stupidity. On the other hand there are also characters that just act unreasonable. This made it really hard to really concentrate on what was going on in the movie and therefore that effectively harmed the enjoyment of watching. Speaking of, I mostly enjoyed the movie and I was rarely bored which is nice. On a technical level the movie was also pretty solid and the acting was mostly pretty decent . However the final result is not to overwhelming and like I said at times you just want to slap some of the characters to come to their senses. [5,5/10]