Final Stop – Film Review

Jesus (Vince Rodriguez) is a Uride driver who works night and day to take care of his mother. Jesus meets Brianna (Kelly McCart) and falls in love. Unfortunately, Brianna has a boyfriend, Kaiden, (Kamy D. Bruder) who is extremely protective. In the midst of trying to figure out how to win Briannas love, Jesus’ abusive father returns home. Jesus’ life takes a sharp left turn as he tries to juggle Brianna, his mother, Kaiden, his father, and his two jobs. Will Jesus buckle under the pressure or will he be able to break the cycle of abuse and drive into the sunset with the girl of his dreams?

Jeffrey J. Moore‘s Final Stop is one of those weird movies where it’s not awful but it’s not that good either. Nothing about this movie really infuriated me or made me want to rip my hair out like some truly awful films do, and trust me, I’ve seen a boatload of them in my time. But at the same time, it didn’t grip me and keep me on my toes. Rather, I just sat there and felt kind of empty.

It’s a movie that you could probably throw on your TV set in the background while you’re doing some housework like cleaning, doing laundry, or doing some late-night work on your laptop. The sad thing is though, is that there should be at least a handful of scenes that pull your attention away from doing these chores. A scene that makes you look up and holds your gaze for the entire duration of the scene, and hopefully, for the rest of the film, but Final Stop never has a standout scene like that.

Rather, there is an abundance of scenes that just kind of exist and feel hollow. The film is actually presented in a relatively decent manner, however. The camera work is quite decent and the film has an eerie vibe to it, although there are definitely some scenes that could have benefited from better lighting. There were a number of instances while watching Final Stop where I genuinely had no idea what I was looking at. Keep in mind that I watched this film on my Ultra HD 4K TV.

The biggest issue with the movie, however, is the script. It really feels like it lacks focus and direction. It comes across as a handful of scenes that were just sort of thrown together in the hopes of telling a cohesive story, but obviously, this is not the right way to go about storytelling. It’s made all the more disappointing because the concept of the film actually sounded interesting to me. Maybe one day we will get a similar story with better execution. I certainly hope so.

It’s difficult to describe how underwhelming Final Stop is because there are some elements that are genuinely not too bad such as the camera work, the eerie atmosphere, and the performances. But at the same time, the film is just absurdly boring and feels like it’s headed absolutely nowhere. And by the time the credits roll, you’ll sadly realize that it really didn’t go anywhere. A wasted opportunity to be sure.