3 out of 5

An effective spook story, Anthony DiBlasi’s Last Shift makes good use of a single location and limited budget to tell a tale focused on creeps and jumps. It doesn’t run very deep – it’s a single view only – but manages to craft some truly unnerving moments through relatively simple means of what we’re shown and when, and keeping us locked in to officer Jessica Loren’s (Juliana Harkavy) point of view.

The title is onea them puns: Office Loren’s first job as a rookie is to be the solo point of contact for a police station during its last night of operation – all calls are being rerouted to a new station elsewhere, and she just needs to be present to direct anyone who wanders by thataways, and to let a final cleanup crew in in the early AM hours. But of course, as we learn bits and pieces of the station’s bloody history through some occasionally clunky exposition, credence is added to odd sights and sounds Jessica begins to see, which start with casually off and begin to get more and more invasive.

DiBlasi relies on some occasional editing and jumps that are a bit cheap, or expose the budget, but overall, the way the scares are anted up is really, really well done, and Harkavy quite excellently creates her character as someone with a need to remain in control, while also clearly unnerved. The pacing is also smart, getting her up and around the station periodically, and connecting us to occasional outside voices via the phone or visitors. And kudos to DiBlasi and cowriter Scott Poiley for not over-using some of the dull scare explanations – i.e. Loren does assume she’s being pranked at one point, but it feels like an acceptable, temporary, self-calming conclusion instead of a dumb excuse.

But once you get through the experience – the film has shown its cards. No idea is so blazingly original as to make it a must-watch, nor is anything necessarily visually / conceptually compelling enough to merit rewatches. It’s a fun scare flick! And being able to solidly execute that makes it certainly worth the time, and worth keeping an eye on DiBlasi’s other projects.