The problem with self-funded independent films like Last Night at Terrace Lanes is that they do not have the same production values as big boy, Hollywood blockbusters. One can only imagine what Director Jamie Nash and his team would do if they had one-thirtieth of the budget at their disposal, right now. It is commendable, the effort even if it’s not the best. However, as long as a player makes contact, something good can happen, and this low-budget slasher flick has, let us tell you, some surprises.
The original Terrace Lanes, which, for the uninitiated, is a bowling alley located in Frederick, MD, finally closed its doors in May 2022. Director Nash, scriptwriter Adam Cesare, and story creator Jenna St. John had eight weeks to write the movie and film it before the place was to be demolished to build new townhouses. Given how many obstacles there were in the pre-production period itself, it is astonishing that the film has even been completed. However, it comes as something of a relief-the cult classic, violent American film that does not waste time promising blood-soaps everywhere. Nash is adept at delivering a touch of gore and has the ability to add to the humorous carnage. Even if it fails to strike the comedic tone, there is a center that glues everything together: the gory and grinning go-getter attitude of the director.
The unused bowling alley is, however, quite efficiently exploited in the film, plumbing its Sybil lips and the Scylla towards which its protagonists can forsake temporally to reside. Borrowing a bit from Robert Resnik off’s The First Power, we meet a cult whose murderers were spotted around the points of a star-shaped map, the last of which is Terrace Lanes. This is where the star is going to be finished and the cult will become one… (the film doesn’t really explain). In order for this to happen, however, they need to dispose of all the people at the venue–including Bruce (Ken Arnold) and his daughter Kennedy (Francesca Capaldi).
This family clearly has issues; while Bruce is at the sticks tending maintenance and the bar with Kennedy, Tess (Mia Rae Roberts) and two of the boys have come in, and Kennedy is trying to keep as far away as she can from Bruce. (There is more than friendship between Kennedy and Tess, and the tension of that relationship Nash employs to highlight their scenes together.) But when the cult attacks the bowling alley and manages to slaughter everyone inside, that’s when their unique talents (which they developed as bowling partners) emerge to save their comrades.
Last Night at Terrace Lanes, despite being a low-quality film, manages to shine in areas of production and a performance as Francesca Capaldi and Ken Arnold are two family members stuck in a conflict and they seem to have fun doing it. There’s something real and wonderfully funny about Arnold’s character, a man who’s been through it all, lost a wife, a child that won’t look his way and has to scrape by working at a bowling alley, yet still finds a child’s pleasure in the small things around him. Alternatively, Capaldi unleashes the inner teenage rebel and completely rolls her eyes and chuffs at her father’s immature demeanor while at the same time enjoying the fact that she is his daughter.
In the midst of all this, Nash goes all out in the bowling alley seeking for gore shots and subliminal violence during the intermissions he has for purposes of narrative. It’s an interesting combination of low budget ideas and high concept execution–some of it works some of it does not, but that’s the nature of films like this. Some characters frequently engage in lengthy and loud conversations interspersed with our heroes, for instance, a whole exchange of ‘We will go through this and be a family again’ behind the pinsetters. We, on the other hand, are left to ponder whether the villains are able to overhear their conversations. But it is all handwaved by some or the other plot devices and it is mostly minor.
Well, it is true that there are certain things that lack professionalism, like how there’s a person shown on security footage running when they were last seen being killed by cultists not long before. However, this is balanced by the absolute ruthless efficiency of the script, which is perhaps best seen in seeing one of the film’s butt-monkeys trying to beg for his life and failing to get his wish even after offering useful information. Nash has the audacity to stick to the plan and not avoid some of the more repugnant details of what happens this particular night.
For me, this is where the low-budget slasher really shines tapping into the heart of the filmmakers. Not because it’s able to go there, but because it has no other option. This wild patchwork of b-horror nostalgia (You Can’t Kill Stephen King which is also set in the mid-2000s serves as a perfect example) and the survival horror subgenre might not be the most sophisticated stuff out there, but who is expecting them to be? Not me, that’s for sure–I’ve been on a couple of such projects, and though I could spot some ghastly approaches and smart “workarounds”, I enjoyed the show. Last Night at Terrace Lanes pays sensational tribute to a local attraction and relishes in its blood-spattered cinematography. With its innate goofiness of being a low-school, weekends with friends, ‘movie’, it also possesses the tenacity to step out of its limited scale and deliver at every level. Everything in this film is the very image of making films for the sake of making them regardless of the resources and expenses.
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