“Night Shift” - Film Review
For a motel as cutely named as The All Tucked Inn, there are a lot of inexplicable, spooky things that keep happening on its grounds. Of course it’s those creepy events and eerie vibes that are essential to Night Shift’s single-location horror flick. Anyone who has worked the graveyard shift (no pun intended) at a hotel knows that weird things happen. You’re in charge of supervising anywhere from 10 to 100+ rooms with no idea what’s going on behind closed doors. Things will go bump in the night, but if you’re brave enough, that shift provides stability and a nice chunk of change.
It’s those positive attributes that bring Gwen (Phoebe Tonkin) to The All Tucked Inn. She’s new in town and desperate for some cash, and she finds herself answering the motel owner’s (Lamorne Morris) desperate plea for someone to cover the desk for the night. It’s a sleepy motel in the middle of nowhere with only a few rooms being used. The owner, Teddy, dreams of fixing the place up, but can’t get a loan. He assures Gwen that he’s only a phone call away should she need anything at all throughout the night. When left alone, however, Gwen learns there’s something darkly supernatural happening here and that Teddy couldn’t help her, even if he wanted to.
courtesy of china brothers
The vast majority of Night Shift takes place on the grounds of The All Tucked Inn. The film does a great job of showing just how odd it is to stay at a motel, or at a shared sleeping establishment of any variety. You’re at your most vulnerable, mere feet away from strangers. Sure, they’re on the other side of a wall, but they’re not out of hearing range. Night Shift smartly mines the inherent uneasiness that comes with being a single woman alone at a motel in the middle of nowhere. She has no protection, law enforcement is at least thirty minutes away, and it’s impossible to predict who will walk through that door.
Night Shift expertly builds the tension through the first and second acts. The creepy feelings are more than earned. All of the strange, foreboding sounds can be explained away by the odd, run-down nature of the motel. The entire film is anchored by Tonkin’s performance. She’s rightfully wary of the situation she’d found herself in, funny when she needs to be, and pulls off the covered-in-blood look the ending calls for.
courtesy of china brothers
Where Night Shift stumbles is in its big twist. The film is obviously working toward something, and it could pivot to a multitude of explanations, but the one it settles on feels anticlimactic. Without fully giving away the twist, the film uses mental illness to explain most of a character’s actions throughout the film. It’s a twist that has a long history in the genre of horror, and it can feel hurtful to those struggling with mental illness of their own. Night Shift is not the most egregious example of this turn in a final act, but with the way the film was building, there was the hope of a surprise no one could have expected.
The actual ending, the film’s final few minutes, is delightfully campy. There is likely another draft of the script that leaned into that charm and allowed Morris to really show off his comedy chops. Night Shift is a cozy horror flick, one that feels familiar, but it also works as a show of skill for first-time directors, the China Brothers.
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