Beyond Fest review: 'Last Straw' collapses long before end

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 9 (UPI) -- Last Straw, which screened at Beyond Fest in Los Angeles, is an example of how not to do a contained thriller. Set in a roadside diner, Last Straw overly complicates a simple premise.

Nancy (Jessica Belkin) discovers she's pregnant before her shift at the Fat Bottom Diner, owned by her father (Jeremy Sisto). Nancy is set to work the night shift with obnoxious busboy Jake (Taylor Kowalski).

Due to Jake's shenanigans during the day, Nancy fires him so she's alone after the day shift leaves. When someone in the dark of night attacks the diner, Nancy only has her own wits to depend on.

This is a reasonable enough premise for a horror movie, though the film opens by showing the aftermath with all the bodies before flashing back 24 hours. So it's already showing how many people don't make it through the night.

But where Last Straw loses the plot completely is halfway through when it flashes back to another character's point of view. The new perspective is a mediocre twist but would be OK on its own.

Last Straw ends up replaying most of the first act from the new point of view. That's a lot of time to spend explaining something that's pretty clear, and breaks any momentum the film had gained.

One scene revealing what was going on outside Nancy's purview would have been enough. It undermines the simple thrill of Nancy fighting for her life by overcomplicating the plot.

It wasn't off to that great a start introducing these characters though. The script overloads each character with excessive motivations that aren't rooted in making the audience identifying with them.

If the film is about regular people confronted with violence then making them regular people is enough. Nancy's pregnancy and hookups with other waiters isn't any more relevant than the fact that a diner manager doesn't deserve to die just for working her shift.

Further backstory about Nancy's late mother and the family's history with the diner seems meant to endear the characters. Instead, it plays as hackneyed dramatic shorthand.

There are several other characters in and outside the diner. The ones with less backstory end up feeling more believable because at least they're not defined by cliches.

Once the attacks begin, they are filmed with herky jerky camera movement. So even the siege part is less than thrilling.

Last Straw will surely find a home after it plays festivals. It's enough of a legitimate movie to land on video-on-demand, but there it will face competition from films that made more out of their limited means.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.