Ok so I paused this movie with 19 minutes to go because it finally, finally got good, and boy am I glad I was patient.
I’ve been purposely watching shit films without much chatter or esteem because I sincerely believe that there’s more to be learned from failures than successes. That is to say, a concise, critically respected film made by some renowned director will teach me less than a film made by an amateur writer and a haphazard crew on a $100,000 budget.
Success Feeds Lust
So, let’s talk about the last few good movies I’ve seen. Based on my list, we can say We Need to Talk about Kevin, 1917, Pale Blue Eye, Nosferatu, Matilda, Karate Kid, and Trap are the most recent films that I thought were stellar and whole as films and stories. Of all those movies, I only bothered to barely write a review about Kevin, but only because I thought people were missing a really important part of the film when talking about it. But people were talking about it. They got it. Everyone’s seen Nosferatu and laughed when Lily-Rose Depp made moaning sounds in the first five minutes (not me, I’m a gooner, girls moaning does nothing for me). No one will contradict me when I call those movies good.
So when I watched Species or Lifeforce, I knew I was signing up for absolute schlock, and that’s what I got. I also got tiddies, but that’s ok because, y’know, aforementioned gooner. But both these films had something to offer. Both films relied on some really incredible practical effects to deliver a visually rich film. Lifeforce engaged in really creative reflective and smoke effects, and did ‘blue sky beam climax’ before Fan4stic and even Avengers. Species was a genuinely interesting sci-fi about an alien-hybrid being discovering their bodies and the human world. Hell, you could even liken it to a girl’s journey through puberty.
I’m not kidding. The 1995 movie Species stars Natasha Henstridge in the titular booby role, Ben mother. fucking. Kingsley as some scientist, Forest Whitaker, Alfred Molina, and some guy named Michael Madsen for good measure. This was an all-star banger cast. This wasn’t just some straight-to-DVD softcore porno. This was cinema. It was MGM Studios’ biggest opening to date and profited over $80 million and spawned three fucking sequels. Henstridge was signed for three of those before the first one was even released.
So let’s talk about puberty. Species follows Henstridge as a child, who then, following a binge eating event, suddenly morphs into a woman after an ugly, violent event. Now, as a new woman, she identifies with the child she was, but still eagerly explores her body and her image. She finds her independence, goes to a nightclub, harangues with female competition, asserts her consent against skeevy men, and then decides on what she wants: a child. When the big, shady government decides to step in and stop her from deciding for her own body, she fights back- cleverly- and even if it means throwing other women under the bus to preserve her autonomy (this point I’m kinda iffy about). When she finally sleeps with a man she chooses, she’s chased, attacked, and murdered by Big Government. The boobie movie Species was actually about women’s rights. Fucking imagine that.
That was something to be learned. Something- even beyond the layers of camp and exploitation and bad effects and stupid writing and 90’s macho one-liners and indulgent sex. There was something in the filth.
Lifeforce was a space vampire movie made by and for horny British dudes, and that’s all there is to that shit.
This all a long-winded explanation for why I stopped the film Last Shift just before its climax. I saw something beautiful. I saw a phone ringing off its hook.
Poverty Breeds Creativity
Not exactly- I just watched an old school, desk-laid cord phone ringing so loud and so hard, it was clattering and rumbling. It felt angry. It felt desperate. Mandated. Filmmaker Anthony DiBlasi shot a 10-second clip so powerful even James Wan wouldn’t be able to un-mature enough to film something so basic, visceral, and real.
I don’t know what the budget was for this film, but I can tell you that most of it probably went towards renting the location. The film’s mise en scene is basic, black and white, rudimentary. The characters are. The horror sometimes leaves a little to be desired. But the atmosphere. The sheer effort made towards building the atmosphere has been stellar.
Halfway through the movie, I was struck with the question, ‘Is the film trying to scare the main character, or is it trying to scare the audience?’ This felt like a revelation. A humbling query, cracking down on the most fundamental facets of the one genre I consume the most. Is the movie scaring me, or is it scaring the person on the screen? When it comes to Last Shift, it almost entirely is focused on scaring its protagonist.
Each situation, every moment, every action- it all works to heighted the main character’s level of fear and stress. Some scenes wouldn’t matter to us- like when she calls her mother, who doubts and questions her daughter’s decisions. Some scenes feel annoying to us: like the first jumpscare. But every other scene serves only to psychologically torture its main character. So when we finally get to the shot of the phone rattling on its receiver- we fucking get it. Stupid scripting and character decisions aside, we fucking get it.
Desperation Feeds Inspiration
Look, I’m not saying that Last Call is some sort of ground-breaking genre-redefining hidden gem that Ari Aster would benefit from studying. I’m telling you, the script leaves so much to be desired. The protagonist’s decisions not to divulge what’s going with her over and over again are completely unreal. Her nonchalance in the face of what is clearly a supernatural phenomenon was immersion breaking like nothing else. The sound effects were clearly free on a stock sound website.
Turns out, that’s okay! This is a pitfall that a lot of creatives fall for. Even DiBlasi admitted in an interview with Entertainment, “Scott and I did Last Shift on a very limited budget.” Dude. That’s okay. More money, more freedom, more resources- it’s not always a good thing. And there’s a lot examples of something like this. My darling film Skinamarink sort of falls into this pitfall too, where the YouTube short was perfect, and while the film was good, it was, ironically, far too long. Hell, even a more extreme example can be found in the first Spielberg Jurassic Park film, which far, far outweighs the most recent release (as of February 2025) Jurassic World: Dominion in every single aspect conceivable.
Ironically, DiBlasi, in 2024, decided to do a remake of Last Shift, titled Malum. I haven’t seen it, but according to Wikipedia, it unfortunately solidified my point about smaller films being richer in inventiveness.
But at the core of Last Shift is a true understanding of fear and horror, and is a truly rare demonstration of a storyteller who knows what they’re doing. I don’t expect that everyone would agree with me on my take. Some may even argue that the cheap effects and the shit writing were detrimental enough that the final emotional moments of the movie didn’t make an impact, and were poor enough that the film could be squarely counted as ‘unremarkable’. That’s ok. I just think that this film did something unique with its atmosphere to drive an emotion of fear to validate its gore and blood and jumpscares and makeup and viscous, runny blood effects. I think this film is the definition of
YMMV.
I watched Last Shift on Tubi.
85scenes Reviews 