It’s always amazing whena filmmaker gets to revisit the storiesthey never fully got to tell. Whether it be budgetary restraints or producers' influence, it’s great when a director returns to themoviesthey created years ago, getting the chance to flesh them out in ways they couldn’t before and, hopefully, granting them the cathartic climaxes they deserved. That seemed to be the intent ofhorrordirectorAnthony DiBlasion his movie, 2023’sMalum; focusing on a rookie cop facing off with demonic cult members,this story is an almost direct remake of the director’s earlier, widely acclaimed movie, 2014’sLast Shift.
This new feature promised a reinvigoration of the concept, a furthering of the jaw-dropping themes that filled the original, and even more of the mind-bending terrors introduced in that film -—which is why so many viewers were left confused after finally watching the remake. Because, while it copies many of the former’s plot elements, the changes DiBlasi made toMalumstripped away so much of the intrigue and surrealist horror that makesLast Shiftsuch an unnerving watch. It accomplished copying the basic plot, yes, but like countless other horror remakes, it did so by taking away the unique elements which render the original as effective as it is. By over-explaining his own plot and choosing not to include the core mysteries that madeLast Shiftsuch a terrifying film, DiBlasi committed one of the cardinal sins of cinema:he made a remake that couldn’t justify its own existence.
A rookie police officer willingly takes the last shift at a newly decommissioned police station in an attempt to uncover the mysterious connection between her father’s death and a vicious cult.
‘Last Shift’ Uses Your Mind Against You
In a horror genre oversaturated with stories of demons terrorizing innocents,Last Shiftmanaged to stand out. It focuses on Jessica Loren (Juliana Harkavy), a cop on her first assignment who took the job to honor her late father. He was a cop himself, but died the year before trying to rescue young girls from a cult. This has driven Jessica to follow in her footsteps and develop the belief that if she doesn’t “make her father proud” by doing everything ordered of her as a police officer, then she’d be dishonoring his memory.
It’s that mental complex that pushes her to stand guard at a defunct police station over the film’s runtime, never really trying to leave even as demonic entities andhomicidal cult members begin popping up around the crumbling building… apparently.We say “apparently” because for all of its horrific imagery of living corpses with shredded faces or gleeful killers giddily hunting Jessica,it’s the woman’s own questioning of whether any of this is realthat makes the movie a genuinely disturbing watch. Jessica never knows if these demons exist or if they’re just images conjured up by her grief-stricken brain, an unnerving sense of confusion that the audience can feel with terrible intimacy every step of the way.Last Shiftis a masterclass in using its mysteries to scare, employing a potentially unreliable narrator and horrific ghosts (literal and figurative) to create one ofthe most jaw-dropping horror endings of all time.
Anthony DiBlasi Remade ‘Last Shift’ Into ‘Malum’
Last Shiftcombined so many different kinds of fear into its straightforward concept of demons in an old police station, an exhilarating feat that made fans even more excited when they learned that DiBlasi wanted to push these elements further inMalum.When asked in an interview withEntertainment Weeklywhy he decided to “reimagine"Last Shift,DiBlasi explained that a limited budget meant they (him and his creative team) weren’t able to do everything they wanted with that first film, that while they were happy with it they hoped more funding and a theatrical release would allow them to create the story they’d always wanted to tell: “Going into [Malum], we knew it would do a theatrical release in the States, and that was really important to me, so an audience can see it the way it was meant to be seen.”
Guillermo del Toro Gave This Horror Remake a Whole New Meaning
Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce’s horror thriller reminds you to keep the lights on.
They wanted to preserve the original’s core components but push them even further, something that is immediately clear withMalum’splot. The movie also focuses on Jessica Loren (this time portrayed byJessica Sula), and while she also has to watch over a defunct police building for her first assignment, this version has some added baggage. Her father survived his initial confrontation with the cult onlyto return to the police station, randomly kill a bunch of other cops, and then turn the gun on himself. This huge shift in plot gives our main character further motive to stay and try to uncover the truth of her father’s breakdown, as well as makes the cult members a much more tangible presencewhileLast Shiftnever gave our protagonist the much-needed clarity on whether they were real or not. It’s heartening to see DiBlasi return to this interesting concept, and the film does have some genuinely frightening moments. However, in trying to provide exposition that the first film refused to give,Malum,unfortunately, loses everything that rendersLast Shiftan exceptional horror movie.
‘Malum’ Becomes Just Another Demonic Horror Movie
While the old adage of “less is more” is debatable, it can’t be denied how amazingLast Shiftis because of all the secrets it keeps from the audience — and how muchMalumfalters because it tries to tell them everything. Viewers joining Jessica in onher confusion over what is really happening is what makesLast Shiftsuch a thrilling experience;seeing her frantically search through the precinct and wondering what the hell is going on is so disturbing to watch because audiences are in the exact same place as she is. They are left wondering if the horrific apparitions are real but, regardless of if they are or not, we still have to suffer right alongside Jessica as she is forced to endure their constant attacks.Malumstill features much of this, with this version of Jessica similarly having to watch in horror as the old building around her becomes infested with demons and killers. And whileMalumusing flashbacks and exposition to explain its plot doesn’t take away from the genuine scares on display,it destroys one of the key elements that madeLast Shift’shaunting confusion so effective: the fear of the unknown.
WhileMalumdoesn’t outright tell audiences its whole plot from the start, its over-reliance on exposition turns the movieinto one of the many trope-ridden demonic horror filmsthatLast Shiftmanaged to distinguish itself from. The genre is oversaturated with narratives of people who see some shady thing from their past manifest into an encroaching demon. While this can be frightening, they so often lack any ingenuity and become yet another uninspired supernatural slasher. WhereLast Shiftthrives is by constantly making viewers question if they are watching ghostly or human terrors, the film emphasizing throughout that the cult members are the true evil and that, whether the demon they believed in is real or not,it is the atrocities they commit and the impact it has on people like Jessica that are the truly frightening things.WhileMalumfeatures that to some degree, its insistence on clarifying the demon’s existence draws away from the utter creepiness of the cult members anddetracts from the many sights of brutal human travesty that makes the original such a discomforting watch.
It’s often unfair to evaluate a film in comparison to another, as while connected, movies likeMalumshould get the chance to be reviewed outside of how they stack up to masterpieces likeLast Shift. And just because it loses some of the original’s greatness doesn’t mean this remake is a bad film; even if it falls into some demonic tropes, the integration of family dynamics in the story is intriguing, and the body horror on display is an unsettlingly great addition. Yet, unfortunately, the fact that this film is a remakeandcreated by the original director makes it almost impossible to view on its ownbecauseLast Shiftprovides such a stellar model thatMalumfails to live up to. It takes the core plot elements of that movie, yes, but it’s in howMalumfumbles the thematic horrors of this story that cements it as just another thoroughly meh horror remake. It’s amazing that DiBlasi was able to adapt his own film and incorporate more of his vision, but as shocking as it is to say,it seems that the director didn’t recognize what made the original so great in the first place.
