If you’re in a movie and you live in a small town then you bet your ass you’re a waitress at an old timey diner. In the case of LAST STRAW (2023), the dinerest movie I’ve seen since LAST STOP IN YUMA COUNTY, it’s called the Fat Bottom Bistro, and it’s one of those cool looking ones with metal walls inside and out, like an Airstream trailer. According to IMDb it was filmed at two diners in New York, and I believe the exterior is one in Germantown that has been closed for a while and likely maintained specifically to rent to productions like this. I bet the old fashioned jukebox with disco lights really works. You always gotta get a shot of those records inside.

This one (which I found on Shudder) centers on Nancy (Jessica Belkin, American Horror Story), a young woman trying to decide what to do with herself after graduating high school, other than drinking hard at parties and working at the diner owned by her dad (Jeremy Sisto, CLUELESS). She just found out she’s pregnant, father to be determined, or not, because it’s nobody in her life. As if that wasn’t bad enough, her car breaks down on the way to work, so she has to walk until her co-worker Bobby (Joji Otani-Hansen), a nice guy who clearly has a crush on her, can pick her up on his bicycle. When she finally arrives her dad tells her someone’s sick and she has to work the late shift alone with Jake (Taylor Kowalski, MAXXXINE), who she hates.

During the day three obnoxious teens are riding their dirtbikes in the parking lot playing with roadkill. She tells them to leave and she’s not polite about it, so they come inside with the dead animal, wearing Halloween masks, and make even more of a scene.

I think Nancy would agree that she sometimes behaves in the manner colloquially described as “being a bitch,” but I find her sympathetic because she has these assholes harassing her and it’s an intimidating situation for a young person to have to deal with on the job, but she stands up to them. The five men on staff kind of stand back while it happens, and Jake in particular laughs about her threats and fake call to the police. She tells them that even though she’s younger than them she’s the manager and they have to respect her decisions, so Jake tells her she’s only manager because her dad owns the place, and keeps pushing that button until she tells him he’s fired. Though he called her out for nepotism he has a sense of entitlement because his mom worked there and the family’s are close, so he’s in disbelief. And his brother Petey (Christopher M. Lopes, METAL LORDS) is his ride home, so she tells him “Go wait in the fucking parking lot.”

This does not go over well with the staff, even Bobby after she refuses his offer to stay and cover for Jake. But the late shift is practically ceremonial. No one comes in. Her dad says she has to be there because the lights are on a timer (that didn’t really make sense to me and seems like over-explaining). She’s so alone she plays the jukebox and dances around like a maniac, spinning on the bar stools, screaming into the microphone, air-guitaring on a mop handle. She’s risky businessing, dancing it out, getting footloose. It’s a really effective scene because she’s having such cathartic fun but you know you’re watching it on Shudder so the scene cannot end on a fun note. That’s clear even before we notice a silhouette outside that she’s oblivious to.

It’s brightly lit inside, dark outside, there are huge windows in all directions, you can just feel the eyes out there – that opening-scene-of-SCREAM feeling. And then she sees the dudes in masks out there, they start banging on the windows, she calls the cops for real this time.

When Sheriff Brooks (Glen Gould – not the one with the 32 short films about him, the one that’s in COLD PURSUIT) shows up he’s distracted because “You have no idea the business you just took me from, little lady.” And when she mentions mopeds he realizes the two are connected. Shit escalates very quickly and for a few minutes it seems like the table has been set for a straight ahead diner siege from here on out, but there’s a big twist. SPOILER. The masked attackers turn out to be her co-workers thinking they’re going along with a prank instigated by Jake and getting into some ugly shit. So we jump back to earlier in the day to find out about all his problems and how getting fired sent him spiraling out of control and transformed him from kind of a dick to the psychotic villain in a horror/thriller type movie. And then it becomes a siege, at first from the attacker point-of-view.

Various kitchen items, including the previously established meat tenderizer and fryer, are used for non-food-service purposes. Nancy tries calling her dad for help and also texts her best friend Tabitha (Tara Raani), which I personally think was a terrible idea. The poor girl shows up not knowing what’s going on and now she’s in danger too.

Storywise LAST STRAW is fine, elevated by being well shot and directed, with a strong cast. Belkin is an outstanding lead, withstanding the physical and emotional gauntlet of the survival horror business while making a somewhat jerky character sympathetic and captivating. You know me, I like when women are allowed to kinda be assholes and still be the good guy, just like guys have always been. I continue to appreciate how many modern horror movies are willing to make their female protagonists sexually active, even promiscuous, and consider it just a thing that humans do and not a capital offense like in past decades of the genre. Balancing the scales of horror history.

If only one person in the cast seems like a likely a breakout star though I’d put my money on Kowalski, who has a charisma that carries through from bitter regular guy to unhinged person on a rampage. I guess he was on Homeland and Snowfall, so maybe he’s already big and I just didn’t realize it.

I know Sisto from CLUELESS and MAY and stuff, I don’t remember spotting him in recent years, so it was kind of cool to see him as an older man playing a gruff dad (even if it would seem to confirm my theory that time is marching on and at some point I became old). I figured he must do TV now or something and yep, according to my data here in the past six years he has played FBI ASAC Jubal Valentine on 121 episodes of FBI, 10 episodes of FBI: International and 2 of FBI: Most Wanted. For all I know one of the iconic characters of modern TV drama, that FBI ASAC Jubal Valentine.

Alan Scott Neal has directed a few shorts, but this is his first feature, after working as a casting associate on movies including GREEN ROOM, REVENGE, SUSPIRIA, and UNCUT GEMS. Screenwriter Taylor Sardoni is also making his feature debut after many shorts. The diner I figure has probly been in other movies, but this is uncomfirmed. Together they have a pretty decent start here.