Last Notification

A young woman lives with the fear of being watched and stalked, while her phone becomes a way for the attacker to enter into her life.

In Last Notification, there’s not a lot of time for anything to get explained or given background detail. At six-and-a-half-minutes long, with no credits or title sequence to speak of, we just have to get on with it and hope that things become clear as we go along. Unfortunately, we’re forced to wait as writer/director, Shaghul Mecheri leads us into the story gently, using the first minute-and-a-half to get our unnamed protagonist (Chelsia) up the stairs, into her flat, and onto the bed to take her shoes off.

Once settled in at home, the young woman gets herself into the shower, saying nothing as there’s no-one else around, leaving the film completely devoid of dialogue. There’s no inner voice, no self-chat, no monologue or reaction to TV or phone, only the chime of a notification and a subtitled message of ‘You are being watched…’ pinging up on her screen.

Once that message has been received, however, things start getting very creepy outside the window and around the flat, for the young woman. The memory of the old ghost story, and the introduction to Scream (1996), begins to come to mind, where ‘the call is coming from inside the house’, as the shower switches itself back on and odd sounds keep happening. There’s a shadowy, hooded figure standing out in the street, but maybe, just maybe, he’s made it into the flat, too.

For what is an extremely simple, and heavily replayed, concept, Last Notification does everything it can to try and up-the-ante and stylise what it’s showing on screen. As such, Mecheri has chosen to shoot in black-and-white, giving a certain noir feel to the proceedings, while the lack of dialogue presumably aims to keep things arthouse and concept driven. The concept though, is still only one of home-invasion in a slasher flick style, but perhaps Mecheri was trying to reach for something more through the way the attacker enters the young woman’s life.

The idea that she’s let him in somehow through her mobile phone could be an intriguing concept to follow, if it was at all addressed by Mecheri in the narrative. The phone is the only point of contact between the two characters initially, but with no dialogue, inner or outer, and no reference through visuals, we as the audience just have to make things up for ourselves. This is a real shame, as without any concrete details or guided reference to follow, there’s just not enough in Last Notification to explain what’s going on.

When the attacker (Babu) does finally show up, he is deeply menacing and creepy in a way that is reminiscent of Killer Bob in Twin Peaks (1990-1992), making him pretty terrifying but still unaccounted for. There are hints that he might not be real, or a figment of the woman’s imagination, but nothing is for certain, and as an audience we’re left looking for answers. While Last Notification works well enough in the scares department, there’s not enough in the narrative to work with in order to get the whole picture, and so the viewer is left out somewhat from fully enjoying what could have been.