Last Straw is a home invasion thriller set in a diner… so a diner invasion thriller? Not sure that’s a subgenre… but anyway, it starts out strong and then makes a script blunder and just barely recovers.

It’s about a manager at an all-night diner working the late shift alone when masked nogoodniks show up at the door (with a dead possum) and start to harass her.

A lot of this movie is on the shoulders of a strong female lead (Jessica Belkin) who sometimes slips a little too far into the bitchy camp. She’s got brass and I like her ‘tude (and riot grrrl dance moves) but she also doesn’t know when to take it down a notch. And that’s either a mistake on the writer’s part, the actor’s part, or a deliberate choice… I’m not sure which. I didn’t stop liking her, but she made it hard to side with sometimes.

But regardless of that, I thought the flick was a very strong confined space thriller… until it makes a choice that it thinks is clever but ultimately makes no difference. This flip to the script just winds up wasting time as we learn more about the killers… but it makes no real difference to the plot. Then it does something a little inexplicable motivation-wise in the final act.

I had the flick at a higher score in the first half… and then it started sliding until I hit an ok score. I think there’s still enough good to watch it if you like home invasion type flicks. It still works as one of those, but isn’t as strong as it should be after its diversions.

Also, it just occurred to me that the title Last Straw might be a joke about the flick taking place in a diner. Where, you know, they have straws. I both want this to be true and don’t.

Anyhow, this is half a pretty good thriller that suffers from bad script decisions. It’s a pretty decent home (diner?) invasion movie but could have been a great one.

Score: 77