A slasher thriller with solid twists, Last Straw is made with more than enough conviction to satisfy genre fans. Smart cinematography and a strong cast help muscle the movie past troubling gaps in its plotting.
Shot on the cheap in New York’s Hudson River valley, the film is set mostly in a diner as impoverished as its workers. Ed Osborn (Jeremy Sisto) manages a staff of misfits and oddballs, like the aggressive Jake (Taylor Kowalski) and easygoing druggie Bobby (Jojo Otani-Hansen).
Osborn’s daughter Nancy (Jessica Belkin), first eyeing the results of a pregnancy test with despair, has to skip a school party to run the late shift for her dad. That means butting heads with Jake, who pushes her so hard that she fires him right as evening falls.
Last Straw opens with scenes of carnage in the diner: blood-spattered floors and walls, assorted corpses, and a hysterical 911 call describing a massacre. Viewers know what’s going to happen, it’s just a question of how reasonably the movie will take them there. Here’s where director Alan Scott Neal makes some smart decisions.
First, the characters are surprisingly spiky and ornery. If Jake is creepy and meanspirited, Nancy has her own issues. She’s contemptuous of customers, treats the smitten Bobby with barely disguised disdain, and lets anger push her into disastrous decisions. Like confronting four punks on mopeds who throw roadkill at her.
Second, writer Taylor Sardoni gradually but inexorably tightens the screws on Nancy. As night falls, the jump scares increase, the lights fail, the phones drop out.
Third, the plot switches to a new point-of-view around the halfway point. That means shots and scenes from earlier in the movie are reworked from new angles. That can be a sign of desperation in some projects, but it opens this movie up in satisfying ways.
Another plus in the movie’s favor: Andrey Nikolaev’s accomplished cinematography. Nikolaev could teach a master class in using a moving camera to lead viewers. The way the camera pans across windows in a garage, or singles out future weapons in the kitchen, pulls viewers deeper into the story.
Not everything in Last Straw works. The motives of some of Jake’s friends aren’t always credible. One character with disabilities is treated in what feels like an exploitive manner. Subplots, including one involving Nancy’s friend Tabitha (a sadly underused Tara Raani), are dropped with no explanation.
But for the most part, Last Straw hits what viewers want in a slasher movie. Even Nancy’s “mistakes,” like running into a basement when pursued by a killer, pay off in the end.
Credits: Directed by Alan Scott Neal. Screenplay by Taylor Sardoni. Producers: Phil Keefe, Michael Giannone, Sam Slater, Levon Panek, Taylor Sardoni. Exec producers: Gill Holland, John Nylen, Donn Kennedy, Donald Ngai, Chris M. Bonifay, Alan Palomo, Victoria McDevitt, Jonathan Louis Gu, Marko Lisonek, Megan Loughman, Matthew Bronen. Director of photography: Andrey Nikolaev. Production designer: Daniel Prosky. Edited by Nathan Whiteside. Original score by Alan Palomo. Costume designer: Sara Lukaszewski.
Cast: Jessica Belkin, Taylor Kowalski, Glen Gould, Jo-Jo Otani-Hansen, Chris Lopes, Michael Giannone, Tara Raani, Jeremy Sisto.
Streaming in Shudder. Photos courtesy AC3 Media.
