'The Last Stop in Yuma County' Is a Tightly Plotted Treat For Fans of One-Location Thrillers

By Petr Navovy | Film | June 12, 2024 |

By Petr Navovy | Film | June 12, 2024 |

One of my favorite types of film is one with a structure that follows the template of: ‘People gather at an isolated location, tension simmers, and then all hell breaks loose’. A certain type of bottle movie, in other words. Some good examples from recent years that come to mind include The Hateful Eight, Coherence, and The Standoff at Sparrow Creek. There’s just something compelling about the play-like staging and the creative ways that filmmakers can explore the relatively limited physical space available to them in these kinds of films, re-framing locations that become intensely familiar, and getting into the granular detail of a specific place. Clichés around locations becoming characters in and of themselves might well be well-worn, but they can be apt indeed in movies that do this well.

There’s a set of conventions and stylistic hallmarks to these films that writer-director Francis Gallupi has clearly studied and understood well, as his feature debut, The Last Stop in Yuma County, proves itself a delicious addition to the mini-genre. Debuting at Fantastic Fest in September 2023 and finding wider release in May a year later, The Last Stop in Yuma County takes place almost entirely at a remote, rural gas station in Arizona in the Seventies. Tended by one employee, Vernon (Faizon Love), and attached to a diner, time moves slowly here, the dust and grime palpable through the screen. Rolling into the gas station one hazy, hot sunny afternoon, a nameless traveling knife salesman (Jim Cummings) finds it to be a) the only gas station for a hundred miles, and b) temporarily out of gas while it waits for a routine re-stock visit from the gas supply truck. Settling in for an involuntary wait at the diner, he meets waitress Charlotte (Jocelin Donahue, from the excellent Ti West throwback horror The House of the Devil). As the minutes and hours crawl by, more arrivals find themselves stranded at the diner, some with more nefarious plans than others, and no matter how many times they are all reassured by Charlotte and Vernon, the advancing clock refuses to show any sign of that damn gas truck.

As with The House of the Devil, The Last Stop in Yuma County would not feel out of place being released in the era that it is set in. There’s a potent feeling of analogue authenticity and immediacy, sweat running down characters’ foreheads and paint peeling off the walls (it doesn’t matter if it’s not literally peeling—it feels like it is). Clocking in at exactly ninety minutes with a rhythm that is thrilling and full of twists and turns, this is a film that is also unafraid to slow things to a crawl and to build tension with craft and patience. It helps that the cast here is uniformly excellent, with a menacing Richard Brake and Nicholas Logan introducing an atmosphere of danger and chaos into the shimmering diner air, and the always delightful Gene Jones putting in a memorable turn (impressive for a character who really likes to nap). For fans of tightly plotted and richly textured genre cinema, The Last Stop in Yuma County is a real treat, and it marks its writer-director out as a name to watch.

The Last Stop in Yuma County is available to rent on Amazon Prime (urgh)