2025 is off to a rough start with the appropriately titled Last Straw. This was one of the most frustrating viewing experiences I’ve had in a while.  I love when a movie tries something new or has an ambitious premise, even if it doesn’t quite pull it off.  But when an otherwise solid film hamstrings itself with basic errors, it drags the entire thing down.

• Directed by Alan Scott Neal
• Written by Taylor Sardoni
• Starring: Jessica Belkin Taylor Kowalski

Last Straw is about a young diner waitress surviving the night, as four masked killers terrorize her.  It’s a standard horror movie premise, with a twist; halfway through the 80-minute runtime, the point of view switches to the killer’s.  Getting to see how the events of the night unfold from both perspectives is an interesting idea, and might have worked, had the main character, Nancy, not been so irredeemably unlikeable.

Mostly Spoiler Free Review

If you’ve seen more than a handful of horror movies, you’ll probably be able to figure out the twist early on.  The movie tries hard to fool you, but in doing so creates some unnecessary logical inconsistencies. I’ll get back to that in a bit.  First, we need to talk about Nancy.

Every time I hear the name Nancy in a horror movie, I think it’s referencing Nightmare on Elm Street. I wish they had taken slightly more from the character than just her name. Last Straw’s Nancy is cynical, aggressive, and rude. She’s dealing with a life that didn’t turn out the way she planned, but she’s immature and bratty about it. From her first introduction, she’s unlikeable and continues that way for the next forty minutes.

Unlikeable Leads

She picks fights with her father, the owner of the diner, picks at her coworker Jake, even when he covers for her in front of her dad, and is generally abusive to Bobby, another coworker who has a crush on her.

After a group of punks in plastic Halloween masks show up to mess around in front of the diner, she’s needlessly hostile to them, escalating the situation. She picks another fight with the diner workers, firing Jake. She follows this up by humiliating Bobby in front of the diner patrons. As the day shift ends, she’s managed to insult everyone, including Petey, a bus boy with Down’s Syndrome and Jake’s brother. They happily leave her to work the night shift alone.

Nancy calls her dad and tells him about Jake. Their relationship is part of her general issues and aggression. Her story isn’t unusual; she’s a young woman stuck in a small town with no future prospects, and she’s just learned that she’s pregnant. Her mother has passed away, and she has no comforting parental figure. So, she’s an asshole to everyone. This could have been a relatable story if Nancy had been allowed to show any vulnerability underneath her hard exterior.

Dual Perspectives

When the perspective switches, the approach to Nancy’s character starts to make a little more sense, in part due to a line dropped by the killer: “Trauma is a gateway drug”.  It’s said as a preemptive justification for his actions, but it’s true for both him and Nancy.

This movie is about taking your trauma out on other people; the killer takes it to such a violent extreme. But Nancy is doing the same thing, wielding her words as savagely as the killer with his knife.

After a night of being harassed, threatened, and assaulted, Nancy starts to fight back. This should have been interesting and triumphant, but her other massive character flaw continues to drag the movie down even during the third act.

Nancy is not smart.

Bad Decisions

Horror movies have a legacy of characters making bad decisions. We’ve all shouted, “don’t go in there” at the screen a time or two.  Some of this is by design. When characters make choices that we as the viewer are smart enough to avoid, it insulates us from the horror. Those terrible things would never happen to us, we’re smarter than that. This is true in real life too; look at victim blaming.

There is, however, a limit as to how many or how stupid the decisions can be before it strains credibility. An otherwise smart character making a couple bad decisions out of stress or fear, that’s fine. Somone repeatedly doing the stupidest thing, or every character making strangely stupid choices, starts to feel like forced plotting.

None of the fights Nancy picks need to happen; they don’t make sense, and they are just bad decisions, even given her backstory and history. Antagonizing the punks in the parking lot is especially stupid for no gain.  Firing Jake served no purpose other than to move the plot. She doesn’t have an in-character reason to do it other than just being angry, so now she’s angry and stupid.

Sadly, she’s not the only character who makes bad choices in Last Straw. A sheriff decides to leave safety for imminent danger, rather than call for back-up. He also makes some confusing statements about what is happening in the town.  I’m trying not to spoil too much, but in trying to build the suspense, I think the information the cop gives Nancy isn’t quite right. There are some logical leaps that don’t quite connect and his dialogue seems to exists to sell the twist more than anything else.

Good Directing

For all its flaws, there are some bright spots in Last Straw. The direction is well done, as is the cinematography. The entire movie has a dreamy, lost-in-time feel that fits well with Nancy’s story.  There are moments where the director cuts away from the most egregious violence and gore, leaving us to view the aftermath.  One tense scene even focuses on a moth beating its wings frantically against a window, as we can only imagine what is happening.  It’s an interesting choice.  These cut-away moments are more interesting when compared to what is shown.  

Violence is a language in horror. Who is killed, why they are killed, and how they are killed, all communicate information about the killer and the victim.  The choices the director makes here certainly reinforce how the situation has spiraled out of control for everyone involved.

Frustrating Flaws

That’s what made Last Straw a frustrating viewing experience. There are good ideas, good technical execution, and smart cinematography. It’s just a script that could use like one more critical pass. All the elements are there, and I can see the points that the director and screenwriter are trying to make.  They just get lost due to how aggressive the main character comes across.

This is a low budget film, and like other movies in that category, does not have the resources of larger projects. One of those resources is a wider variety of people available to read scripts with a critical eye and give feedback on how your narrative and messaging will come across to an audience who doesn’t know the filmmakers.

Audiences have to want to watch your characters. They don’t have to be good people, but there should be something compelling or relatable about them. Nancy’s small-town circumstances and backstory could be that, but the crux of that monologue doesn’t come till the end of the movie. By then, I was already pretty much tired of her.

Final Thoughts

Last Straw is not without some positives. If your tastes run more towards crime thrillers and tense home invasion-style horror, you may find some things to enjoy here. It takes a while to ramp up, and works hard to build a tense atmosphere. It’s not particularly scary, but that might have more to do with my personal lack of investment in the lead character.  It’s weighed down by poor characterization and a weak ending, but is not without some bright spots in the direction.

Last Straw is available on streaming

Check out my other recent horror reviews here:

• Smile 2
• Nosferatu