Brian Austin Green plays John Dunbar, a high school teacher in the midst of a bitter divorce. It's the height of the COVID pandemic, so his history class meets on Zoom. When the students think Dunbar is offline, he overhears them discussing how much of a creep they think he is. They also make plans to play paintball in their vacant high school after dark. Dunbar concocts a plan of his own that will give the students undeniable proof of his creepiness.

The movie wastes no time establishing Dunbar's instability. He drinks too much. He has suicidal thoughts. He compliments one of his female students in ways that, while not quite crossing a line, seem inappropriately fawning. He picks an unwinnable argument with his estranged wife and a winnable street fight with an impatient driver.

Let's meet the students, or at least the only four that matter. There's Sadie (Makena Taylor), the recipient of Dunbar's weird compliments; Genesis (Julia Quang) and her boyfriend Miguel (David Valdes); and Trevor (Acoryé White). They're White, Asian, Latino, and Black, respectively. I mention their ethnicity because it's pretty much all the individuality that any of them get.

Sadie and the gang break into the school. Dunbar catches them in the auditorium. He gives them an ultimatum: he can bust them for trespassing, or they can let him join their paintball game. After an uneventful first round, Dunbar reveals that he knows what the kids said about him on Zoom. Then he casually mentions Sadie's private Instagram handle. The kids have finally seen enough red flags to decide it's time to bounce. Before they can find a way out of the school, Dunbar exchanges his paintball gun for a real one.

The rest of the movie is a long, stupid game of cat and mouse. The students can't leave the school because Dunbar chained the doors from the outside. Miguel is the first to...

Wait a minute. He chained the doors from the outside...from the inside? Okay, I'll circle back to that later.

Miguel is the first to get shot. After some fruitless wandering, Dunbar ambushes Sadie and Trevor in the auditorium. He's propped Miguel's body in a seat and tied Genesis next to him. He offers to spare her life if she can pass a pop quiz. Unfortunately for her, she thinks Lee Harvey Oswald killed Abraham Lincoln.

Dunbar is one of those magical movie villains. When Sadie gets the attention of a security guard outside, Dunbar miraculously appears behind him and shoots him in the back. Between that and the chains on the outside of the exits, there must still be some way to get in and out of the building, right? Could it really be the only one? Did Dunbar manage to barricade every other exit in a building designed to be easily evacuated in emergencies? Without the security guard noticing? And how did he know to ambush Sadie and Trevor in the auditorium? Positioning Miguel and Genesis in the balcony seems like a lot of trouble to prepare for a scenario that might not happen. When Sadie manages to get out of the school, Dunbar easily intercepts her on the football field. How he knew where to find her, why the field is completely illuminated during a pandemic shutdown, and why Sadie felt the need to cross it in the first place are exercises left for the reader. I have way more questions than answers.

Antiheroes come in a lot of different flavors. On one end of the spectrum, you have Dr. House, who's a brilliant doctor but also a pill-popping asshole. On the other, you have Walter White, who's a dedicated family man but also a murderous drug kingpin. Dunbar tends toward Walter White, but without the good traits. He's a petty, abusive jerk but also a violent, egomaniacal predator. I get the impression that the writers intended him to be a Falling Down type regular guy gone bad, but there's nothing like a downward spiral or anything else to make his self-destruction interesting. He's just a dick who thinks a student is flirting with him because she texted him a question about a homework assignment.

Incidentally, Glenn Plummer plays the security guard. I'm a little sad that Last the Night is the first thing I've seen him do since a guest appearance on Shameless. Maybe I'll check if Blood Sacrifice is any better.

3 out of 10.

Seen on Tubi.