Last Straw-- My Take On The Movie With Spoilers
Plot: Working the late-night shift, Nancy must fend off attacks from a group of miscreants.
My Take On the Movie
As soon as you turn into a functioning adult, you soon realize that one of the things you must take in your stride are the bad days that keep on coming.
It's like your patience is being tested until you decide that you can not take it anymore. And then there is that one moment that is too much for you, and you let out all your frustrations. It's the last straw.
Quick Movie Review
Last Straw is an interesting thriller that gets straight to the point while adding extra layers to the story and characters. There may be a scene or two that is prolonged, but the end result is a taut thriller that focuses on desperation and frustrations. And sometimes both.
LAST STRAW Movie Plot
The movie opens with an emergency call being made. We only see a hand. Someone has gotten injured and may die. The call cuts before we can see the person or learn the name.
Twenty-four hours earlier, we see Nancy squatting in the fields and obviously doing her toilet business out in the open. Turns out she is peeing on a pregnancy test stick.
She picks up her friend Tabitha, who notices the kits on the floor of the car and asks her about it. Nancy tells her she is pregnant but doesn't know who the father is as she was with three men at the party where sue possibly boy pregnant.
Nancy doesn't know if she wants to keep it. Tabitha advises her to tell Edward, Nancy's father. She tells her friend that her father would kill her before she could kill her baby.
Tabitha leaves, and Nancy is off driving to work when she her car breaks down. She has to walk all the way, but luckily, she runs into Bobby. He tells her she isn't late to work just yet, but she replies that since she is the manager, she has to be at the diner early. Bobby gives her a lift on the bicycle. It's obvious Bobby is crushing on her.
At the diner, Nancy's father Edward isn't too happy that he will have to shell out $2000 to fix her car but since she will be working the late shift, she wouldn't need a car tonight anyway.
Nancy isn't too happy to hear that. On top of that, she is told that she will have to work with Jake, the guy who she thinks is weird. She would rather work with Bobby, but Edward tells her that Jake has been there for a long time, and so he trusts him.
Nancy reluctantly goes about her day at the diner. She goes to pick up plates, sees some leftover food, and throws up... right near Jake.
He is out smoking, and when he sees her, straight away asks her if she is pregnant. Nancy lies, and when Edward comes to check up on her, Jake lies about the bad meat he forgot to dispose of. That bag, of bad meat, will come into play later.
Nancy keeps having a rough day with Petey, one of the staff, spilling something on the floor and not picking it up immediately. But he's Jake's brother and has a disorder that makes him slow to process orders.
Nancy is told by Edward to act like a manager and show some bravado. She tries but is having too much of a rough day, which is exacerbated by the arrival of a gang if miscreants on mopeds.
They toss a dead animal in the parking lot, and Nancy tells them to get lost. She has to prove her mettle in front of her staff to show that she is in charge.
They leave. But Nancy only thinks they left.
They return, and Bobby tells her that he did ask them to leave, but they weren't listening. The gang members are now wearing masks. Nancy stands up to them, and when they still don't budge, she pretends to call the police on the phone. Only Jake knows she isn't going through with her threat.
The miscreants finally leave but warn that they will be back.
As the staff gathers in the kitchen later, Nancy asserts her position as a manager, but Jake laughs at her and tells her that the only reason she is manager is because of her father or else he and the others were obviously better candidates. Humiliated, Nancy saves face by using her power as a manager to fire Jake on the spot.
Afterwards, when Bobby goes to talk to her, she tells him off and publicly humiliates him by announcing that she would never get it on with him.
Now the entire staff is angry with her. Nancy did make an impulsive decision just because she was having a bad day and not sure about what to do with the baby. The way Bobby has been hanging around her, though, chances are that he was the father.
Now that everyone has left, Nancy is left on her own. She calls up her father and tells him that she fired Jake. He isn't too happy because Jake's mother was hired before, and he was a legacy. He's going on a date, though, and doesn't care much at the moment.
Nancy isn't too pleased that her father is dating after her mother died years ago.
Her father tells her that he changed the light system and that the lights would go off automatically at sunrise, so someone has to stay at the diner. Nancy is annoyed to learn that she was chosen for the night shift just because someone has to be there because the lights in the diner are on.
Nancy tries to make the best of a lonely night by dancing about but then pukes all over the floor. With no other staff, she has to clean up her puke.
Just then, someone bangs against the door and windows, startling her. She goes outside to check but doesn't see anyone. The lights go out, and she gets even more scared. This time, she calls the police for real.
Sheriff Brooks shows up and isn't too concerned because the lights were out. The light switch was off.
He still looks around but doesn't find anything off. Nancy tells him off to because he keeps eyeing her. When she mentions the gang in mopeds, Brooks gets alarmed. He drags Nancy out and tries to get her into the car, stating that he was called in before to investigate a series of gruesome murders and that the perpetrators were men on mopeds.
A masked man shows up behind the sheriff and boinks him on the head. Nancy runs inside to hide. But first, she grabs a knife.
There's some running around. Brooks is killed. Bobby shows up to help Nancy, but they are both tied up. One of them gets Bobby and Nancy to even kiss. Nancy manages to get out of her binds and runs about with a knife. She manages to stab one while she is escaping.
The masked man is revealed to be...Petey. Nancy is shocked to discover that her attackers were none other than her staff members.
A flashback reveals that Jake had begged Nancy not to fire him because he needs the insurance and has bills to pay. Nancy had cruelly told him that he should have not mouthed off to her.
While Jake is sitting in the parking lot, waiting for Petey's shift to get over, he realizes his medication is getting over and makes several calls to get an insurance cover. All his efforts are in vain.
His hatred for Nancy grows. On top of everything, he owes people money for illegal substances. Frustrated, he finds the miscreants and blames them for getting him fired. Before that, he makes a joke about what a farmer would say when he can't find his tractor? He would reply, "Where is my tractor?"
The joke doesn't get any laughs. Jake stabs the one who approaches him. He then stabs and does away with the gang of miscreants, saving the police a lot of trouble.
He then devises a plan to get rid of Nancy as an act of revenge. Him getting fired on top of all his personal problems was the last straw.
Edward calls Nancy, but she doesn't pick up. Well, obviously. So he calls Jake and his phone is in the car. Edward grows concerned, but his partner tells him that Nancy can take care of herself. He tells her that Nancy is still his daughter. His partner makes a face.
He manages to convince Coop and Bobby to join him. Bobby is hesitant at first but is reminded how Nancy would never care for him.
Bobby does initially partake in scaring Nancy, but when he sees her cowering in the corner, he decides to go help her instead.
Back in the present, Petey is brought inside. Coop is in charge of finding Nancy but manages to mess up properly.
Nancy has found Bobby's phone and messages, Tabitha. Coop finally corners Nancy in the kitchen, but she remembers her kitchen lessons and pushes him in the fryer where he gets burned. She then knocks him out.
Bobby wants to help Nancy and takes the keys. Jake doesn't like Bobby getting soft, and they both fight. We later see that Jake had gotten the upper hand and stabbed Bobby.
Tabitha shows up and is shocked to see blood and bodies everywhere. She runs away, terrified.
Nancy had seen the bags of meat outside and had come up with an idea. She goes to Bobby, who struggles but manages to give her the keys.
LAST STRAW Ending Explained
Nancy has to deal with Jake, who, after a bit of running around, manages to grab her from behind and stab her. He then turns her toward him and stabs her again.
Nancy falls to the ground while Jake escapes in his car. He makes a phone call about his friend being hurt and then throws away his phone.
We later see that Nancy is alive and that she had taped up meat around her torso. However, while she wasn't stabbed deeply, she was stabbed. There is blood, but she is determined to make Jake pay for what he did. She talks to Bobby's corpse and then gets into a car and drives to his house.
She uses the diner sticker to put it on the doorbell so that it keeps ringing.
Jake is distracted and opens the door to see a sheriff's car. It is Brooks' car, of course. He backs away when Nancy comes up behind him and stabs his neck. He falls to his knees. He makes that rotten joke about the farmer again. Nancy knows the answer about the farmer asking where his tractor is. Then she rips his neck properly.
She goes away and then collapses in the middle of the road, bleeding. She remembers her conversation with Tabitha and how they talked about her mother and how she died when she was Nancy's age. Nancy is still thinking about her baby, but chances are it didn't survive considering her bleeding.
Her father comes in his car, then parks it far away and comes running to her. He assures her that help is coming.
Nancy probably survives.
The movie ends.
Final Thoughts About the Movie
LAST STRAW is thought-provoking and shows us just how easily humans can be prompted to make rash decisions when they experience the last straw that is holding them together.
The movie is engaging, and it helps that the story doesn't drag on for minutes.
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