"Last Shift" an effective low-budget genre-hopper

Last Shift (2014)

A supernatural/occult/psychological twist on John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13, Last Shift is a methodically paced, pretty effective low-budget chiller that twists expectations in how fluidly it moves through a few different horror subgenres at a lean 90 minutes. Put aside the less-than-subtle B-movie leanings of its cover art (which really has nothing to do with the film proper anyway) and this is a cut above most video-on-demand releases as far as the horror genre is concerned. Nerve-rattling for most of its length, the film is on more solid ground when it’s suggesting what’s to come rather than the times it’s spent being screechy and explicit. Evil is evil, but isn’t it far creepier to hear about evil and being given hints of evil instead of seeing evil with a satanic sign carved onto its face? 

For her first shift, rookie police officer Jessica Loren (Juliana Harkavy) is assigned to guard a closing police station and just wait until a Hazmat team arrives to clean up bio-hazard materials. She’s following in her late cop father’s footsteps, but it’s a bittersweet time as the station happens to be the murder scene where her father was killed at the hands of a Manson Family-esque cult. While her evening starts out a bit uneventful, she soon receives a distress call from a sobbing girl asking for help, even though all 9-11 calls have apparently been rerouted to the new police station up the road. As the night goes on, Jessica realizes all of the strange goings-on in the station could be linked to cult leader John Michael Paymon (Joshua Mikel), his suicidal followers and their victims. Will this be Jessica’s last shift of her life? Read the full review at Diabolique Magazine.

Grade: B