Got a new "Trapped in a small location and under siege by killers" movie. It's pretty decent...
The first third is really strong! We open at a crime scene in a diner, then start a day earlier. The MC is a girl who manages the diner, and she's kinda an A-hole to everybody...which is annoying because she's not a sympathetic character, but it helps to add mystery. There are a bunch of characters with petty reasons to not like her, so we have a lot of suspects.
The movie really picks up when she starts the late shift, alone at the diner. At this point, it starts to feel like it might take a full The Strangers turn. Characters start messing with her from outside, and she's got to hold on until help arrives. Everything up to this point is pretty tense and/or keeps you watching to pick out what will happen.
When we get a first big reveal, the plot shifts away from that Strangers vibe, and becomes something else. That's not actually a bad thing. It fills in a lot of information and stays tense and interesting...just not as effective as the first third was.
But then it kinda slides off the rails in the third act. The story feels fairly grounded and realistic up until this point...but then it takes some serious leaps to get everything in place for an ending that honestly wasn't worth the amount of plot contrivances it needed to get there.
So really strong start, a pretty good middle portion, and a very disappointing end. It's good enough to watch, but it would have been a better movie if they'd just stuck to The Strangers in a diner. Once they veer off, characters start to make dumb decisions, and there are a few loose-hanging threads that feel wasted.
