Writer-director Joseph McGee’s Connecticut-made short feature (or long short subject, take your choice) is like a B-movie pocket-edition double-bill version of the 1988 Dutch suspense classics The Vanishing (Spoorloos), which itself was remade by Hollywood twice, as The Vanishing (1991) and, more loosely, Breakdown (1997). As previously noted, take your choice.
Family man Jake Finke (Martin Monasterski) is driving with his wife and daughter when he makes a routine gas station stop, both ladies heading to the restroom. When the female Finkes do not emerge, Jake cannot find anyone who admits to ever having seen them in the first place, and the surly attendant behind the counter is no help.
When Jake summons police, the chief investigating local lawman, Detective Rinaldi (Mario Carneiro) finds a bottle of prescription anti-psychotic drugs in Finke's pocket. Security-camera videos only show Jake in the car alone. A doctor soon on the scene claims that Jake's wife and child died some time ago in a tragic accident and that the man is an escaped lunatic who persists in fantasies that his loved ones have only suddenly gone missing.
The case seems straightforward enough. But Det. Rinaldi is a thorough, no-nonsense sort who starts checking dates and facts and finds that things don't quite add up...
With a scant run time and few plot complications, the criminal-conspiracy premise unravels in a speedy fashion, unfortunately evaporating the paranoia of the opening act. Thesping is uneven, and cop martial arts scenes are especially underwhelming. But technical credits remain sharp, and in general, the material resembles an episode of a network police-procedural drama, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, perhaps, minus recognizable actors. Collections with a Connecticut/New England orientation may be interested in The Last Stop as a hometown-hero product. Otherwise optional.