LAST SHIFT (2015) review

LAST SHIFT is an impressive, well-acted, well-directed picture that would do John Carpenter proud. It packs a lot into its narrative: a rookie on her first shift, a defunct police station, a Manson-like cult, poltergeist activity, horrifying hallucinations, wandering transients, and ghosts. Plenty of ghosts.

There are shades of ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, SESSION 9, and 1408 but none of the echoes feel blatantly copied. What’s more, it can be downright mean with its imagery. One visual in particular of a corpse-ghost rising from some invisible rope was as cool as it was unsettling.

These kinds of movies are fun-house flicks. They send a character into a bad place and force them to live there till the bitter end. For the audience, it’s a cinematic haunted house at the fairgrounds: watch what horrors pop up next! LAST SHIFT may be soft on story or a deep character arc, but as far as a nice, nasty, straight-up horror show goes, it carries the goods.