Hell in the Cell

Described as “John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 but with a supernatural twist,” Last Shift is a feel-good horror movie pitting a chick cop against a demonic ghost. I know what you’re thinking – is the chick cop gonna drop top? We’ll have to wait and see when Last Shift is finally released on DVD sometime during the day on October 6, 2015.

Here’s what they’re telling us/me/you: “Officer Jessica Loren has been assigned to wait for a Hazmat team to pick up bio-hazardous waste from the station’s armory. But unbeknown to Jessica, cult Leader John Michael Paymon has haunted the department ever since he and two of this followers committed suicide a year ago to date. And now, Jessica is about to find out how dangerous they can be when she’s left alone on this…last shift.”

This one was originally titled Paymon: The King of Hell. I like that a hell of a lot more than The Last Shift, which left me with a “gum didn’t come out of the machine” look on my face. Why someone actually thought Last Shift is a better title is supreme bafflement of the highest order.

There have been other horror movies with a similar theme. The one that burps to the surface of my mind is 2011’s Inkubus, starring Freddy Krueger (or “Robert Englund”) as the title character.

Here’s what that one is all about: “Inkubus tells the story of a skeleton crew working the final shift at a soon to be demolished police station. The night takes a gruesome turn when the demon Inkubus calmly walks into the station holding the severed head of a murdered girl. Inkubus toys with the crew, allowing himself to be restrained, and begins to proudly confess to his litany of crimes, some dating back to the Middle Ages.”

No doubt Inkubus is gonna get a ticket for murder. But to toy with cops? He’s looking at a life sentence.

Wife Beating Ghost

After getting out of jail for killing her cop husband (who was also a professional wife beater), Marnie is put on house arrest in the same NY brownstone killing pad with blood still on the walls. Handcuffed to her ankle is one of those electronic tracking devices that beeps like a smoke detector when you light a cigarette or go outside its 100-foot range. This makes it tough to get away from the ghost of her husband who keeps showing up to get his revenge on her for her getting revenge on him.

The visitations are standard ghost stuff with little innovation. (Note to dead guy: why rattle the silverware when you can use your powers to stick ’em into things like walls and people?) Shanks, her ex-husband’s cop partner, has it out for Marnie. One step outside the beep zone and she’s back in jail for 10 more years. So he sits in his car outside her house and stares. Good use of taxpayer money.

When he checks in on Marnie and discovers her face bruised, he uses years of detective work to conclude someone else killed her husband to death and she can’t say who without herself getting killed, also to death. Shanks thinks it’s the handsome sexy grocery delivery guy with a criminal record. Yeah, not so much.

While handsome sexy grocery delivery guy with a criminal record is having sexual relations with the house arrest hottie, the ghost husband shows up, looking like a paint smear than an actual ghost. Seeing his wife doing it with someone not him makes him head-butt the kid in the face over and over, the boy’s blood splattering to show the outline of Mr. Invisible. I felt that was kinda neat.

By the time Shanks does show up (and has a body drop on him from the ceiling, which I felt was momentarily humorous, he discovers Marnie was telling him the truth about her ghost ex.

100 Feet’s (2008) story? Kinda interesting. The ghost action? Meh. The handsome sexy grocery delivery guy face-smashing? Nice. The ending? Feh. And I whole-heartedly stand by that.