Starring: Juliana Harkavy, Joshua Mikel, J. Larose, Natalie Victoria, Sarah Sculco, Kathryn Kilger.
Director: Anthony DiBlasi.
So after a lengthy hiatus, I am back to discuss more horror movies on the internet for all of six people to read. Luckily, it seems like this practice is basically like falling off a log, so I shouldn't be too rusty. But it's my last shift at my current job-and I couldn't be happier about that-so I figured it'd be fitting to watch Last Shift to get back into the swing of things. Updates should become far more frequent after this, so stay tuned...all six of you who read these.
I've seen this movie pop up on some early "Best Of" lists, so we'll see what this thing has to offer.
So we have a pretty Cop(Officer Loren) on her first day of work, the station is basically deserted and the first guy she runs into is clearly on edge. But Officer Loren-Jessica-is stationed for the last night of the police station before all operations are up and running over at the brand spanking new station. So Jessica has to keep watch over an abandoned station until hazmat workers come to dispose of a bunch of bodily waste stained items, and so she is not allowed to leave. It takes about a minute or so before the good ole' flickering fluorescents and mysterious, choppy phone calls to begin.
There's a semi-creepy scene of Loren stepping outside into a deserted street(looks extremely barren: the closest structure seems to be an abandoned gas station), turns around and finds a vagrant inside the station. It's a creepy scene-especially since we know how unlikely it is that the vagrant could have gotten inside without supernatural assistance-at least until said vagrant starts peeing on the floor and Loren takes charge of the situation and kicks him out. It's an important scene, since otherwise it's mostly watching a Police Officer explore an empty station(with some lockers opening on their own, and a disgusting bathroom) and occasionally receiving phone calls from an alarmed young woman named Monica (who is almost certainly a ghost).
In essence the movie is making the right moves: Loren is definitely isolated, her means of communication are clearly compromised(an attempt to use her radio-as any sane person would do-is responded to by children singing) and it seems pretty obvious to me that phone calls out are likely not reaching their intended locations). Loren once again encounters her vagrant and takes him down(maybe a little too aggressively?) and locks him up...and the door slam shuts, lights go out, and there's weird screaming...maybe we're getting somewhere. I wish I knew a little bit more about Officer Loren-why she became a cop, does she have a family(besides her worried Mom on the phone), stuff like that-but she has enough natural charisma that I mostly care what happens to her. I just wish I had more to relate to. But the jail cell sequence was suitably scary, so that works.
Oh, okay, now we have some exposition. Marigold-who is probably one of the ghosts, you guys-is a white trashy girl hanging outside smoking, and tells Loren about the evil "Manson Family Wannabes" who died in that station...Loren knows that, because her Father was one of the cops who brought them in that night. So, now I have answers to some of those questions I had earlier. We're getting somewhere. That somewhere might be a bit on the cliche side, but that isn't automatically a bad thing.
That exposition was sufficient, though, which makes the following montage of video taped crazy-talking unnecessary. The following scare sequence actually works pretty well, though: some really good editing and camera trickery. The tune the villain whistles isn't as creepy as they hope it to be. Officer Loren is dealing with all this insanity pretty well...it takes her a long time to decide it's a prank.
There is a frustrating pace problem with this film. While it should be building tension and momentum, it instead presents (admittedly decent) scare scenes and then moves to very normal scenes were Loren talks with another character. Then that character takes off and another scare presents itself. That start-and-stop pacing just feels off-putting, and not in a fun, stylish way. It's just frustrating.
But those scare scenes are very stylish. Puppet-like corpses, bloody masks, crawling murder victims...it's all good looking and creepy stuff. It feels little "kitchen-sink," though, in that writer/director Anthony DiBlasi threw every single thing he could think of into the film. Trouble is, it doesn't feel like it's building to very much. Even as we've entered the climax, scenes just seem to roar themselves into being and then die quietly on the floor just as quickly. Again, they aren't bad scenes, just awkward and jumbled. Maybe if Office Loren got a little pissed off-and she was for a second there-this would work a little better. But her dead Father calling her on the phone and telling her "The ghost is the guy who killed me, and you should totally fight him" isn't a strong element: I would have rather Loren gotten there on her own. But instead the movie keeps circling around on itself: Loren witnesses supernatural, gets freaked out, calms down, goes about her business, and then witnesses supernatural again and we cycle through. I thought the cycle would have been broken when Loren is confronted by a ghost who actually talks to her, and Loren calmly resists being terrified...but then we just went back to where we started.
Aww, unearned downer ending. Damn it. I hate that shit. You had an obvious through-line, movie. So direct. But you ignored it and went to some nonsense instead. Blah.
Final Thoughts: I hate unearned downer endings, especially when they're gone about in this way. There are some good scare scenes, though, despite their awkward presentation. The pacing is really haphazard and frustrating, and...man, so many story beats are just way too poorly presented for me to say this was a good movie. It wasn't terrible or anything, not really, just not a strong outing at all. Disappointing, really.
Final Rating: Two and half stars because I'm feeling generous about the scare scenes.
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