Nerdly » Frightfest Glasgow 2024: ‘The Funeral’ & ‘The Last Straw’ Review

14th Mar2024

Frightfest Glasgow 2024: ‘The Funeral’ & ‘The Last Straw’ Review

by Phil Wheat

THE FUNERAL

Stars: Ahmet Rifat Sungar, Cansu Türedi, Tekin Temel | Directed by Orcun Behram

Cemal, a lonely hearse driver, has been entrusted to secretly transport the body of a murdered young woman, Zeynep, to her parents’ home at their final request. But he hears strange groans from the back of the vehicle during the journey, even though Zeynep hasn’t got a pulse. As her body comes back to life, the moment he sets eyes on her, Cemal falls in love with the undead woman. So he must constantly feed her flesh by committing his own murders, even if it means dealing with the police force’s attempts to capture a serial killer.

The Funeral start strong – our protagonist tasked with keeping a body quiet for 30 days is an intriguing premise and poses a LOT of questions about how and why but all that is left behind when the the supernatural element comes into play. It’s a shame. The idea of being on the run with a dead body feels like it could have possibly been a better film than what The Funeral ultimately gives us.

Buried in a film about a man and his zombie on the lamb, it turns out that The Funeral is a revenge tale of the biblical variety. Literally. An eye for an eye, a life for a life is very much at the forefront. There is something of a love story at play here too. A twisted love story but one nonetheless. Our protagonist Cemal is a lonely man, so lonely that he finds solace in his charge, even though he really shouldn’t. Why? Well until a short while ago she was dead!

In the end, The Funeral feels like a short film idea spun out to far too long a length. Instead of a drawn-out feature, this could easily have been a more powerful 30-minute short and achieved exactly the same result. It also does feel, at the film’s close, that the film was almost reverse-engineered from the impactful final snow-set scenes, which provide the film’s true highlight as Cemal and Zeynep get their revenge on those that did the latter wrong.

**½ 2.5/5

The Funeral screened on Saturday, March 9th as part of this year’s Pigeon Shrine Glasgow Frightfest.

THE LAST STRAW

Stars: Jessica Belkin, Jeremy Sisto, Taylor Kowalski, Glen Gould, Christopher M. Lopes, Michael Giannone, Tara Raani | Written by Taylor Sardoni | Directed by Alan Scott Neal

A rural roadside diner becomes the host of a maniacal killing spree – leaving young waitress Nancy to clean up the bloody mess. After firing the staff at her dad’s diner, she covers the last shift of the night by herself. Little does she know though, she is far from alone. The day is returning to haunt her and when things begin to spiral out of control, she must fight for her life over one long night.

It’s clear from the get-go that The Last Straw is heavily influenced by John Carpenter – from the synth soundtrack to the Assault on Precinct 13-esque plot. Though at its heart this film is still an old-school slasher but given an interesting “makeover,” as this film is told from 2 perspectives. This adds an extra layer of interest AND a deeper story to what is an all-too-familiar plot.

Kudos must go to the filmmakers for managing to change-up a cliched formula by using the concept of showing the same story from two different perspectives – the first from the victim, stuck in her own proverbial, and in the case of the diner, literal bubble. Here The Last Straw follows the traditional tropes of the slasher/home invasion thriller genre; with our heroine not knowing the why’s of the situation but seemingly knowing the who – a bunch of local kids who cause trouble just for fun…

However, the film then “resets” and we see the same story told from the antagonist’s point of view, where the “truth” of what’s happening presents a totally different story. One that isn’t as clean-cut and cliched as expected. It’s a remarkable use of playing with the format of film – changing what the audience thinks and subverting what the audience expects, all the while managing to stick to the conventions of the genre – and the filmmakers should be congratulated for doing so AND making a fantastic traditional slasher movie too!