Review of Midnight Movie (2008) by John E — 10 Sep 2009

So I just got through watching "Midnight Movie," a flick I grabbed off of Wal-Mart's Blu-Ray Bargain Row.

I have to say, it impressed me, which is hard these days concerning horror. I watch a B-grade horror flick like this every now and then. Sometimes I luck out ("Dance of the Dead") and other times, I'm underwhelmed ("Dog Soldiers" or Joe Dante's "Homecoming"), or even worse, sometimes I'm just left somewhere in the middle (Hatchet).

My biggest concern with today's B-grade horror is not that it's not original (I leave that gripe for mainstream horror -- even though I loved the "Friday the 13th" remake), no, my gripe is that every horror flick has to have some big twist ending nowadays. It's always been that way but everything post-"Sixth Sense" has had to have some sort of mindfuck towards the end. Most of the time they're so thin I have a hard time suspending my disbelief.

"Midnight Movie" is the exact opposite, but let me get to that in a minute...

To start this off, let me say that I liked this movie and I'm glad I bought it. It's original, creative and entertaining.

The story involves a midnight showing of an old 70s horror flick. During the screening, the lines of reality and fiction begin to merge as the onscreen deaths actually begin to occur within the theater. Anyone who has seen "Demons" or "Popcorn" or hell, even "Scream 2" could probably see many similarities here and rightly so.

But "Midnight Movie" eventually does go in it's own direction. I can't explain much without spoiling but let me say that this movie may start out like those others but it ends up in a completely different ballgame.

This movie mixes the slasher genre with the ghost story genre which is something I've wanted to do for awhile in my writing but have never fully developed. Here it works better than I ever could have done it.

Fans of the "Friday the 13th" series might remember that somewhere towards the end of the series, Jason somehow got the power of teleportation. He jumped all over the place with no explanation. Here, our villain has that power too, but it's explained in a plausible way that fits in with the story.

There are elements from a lot of other horror greats all the way from Jason to "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and even "Phantasm." I really dug this flick's heart; it never felt like the producers were just looking for a quick buck, everything felt genuine.

Let's get back to the ending though. Without giving anything away, let me say that even while I was enjoying this movie, I was dreading the end. I just knew that somehow, they were going to try to throw a "mindfuck" in there that was just going to make me roll my eyes.

"Midnight Movie" actually went in reverse of that with an almost anti-climactic ending where there is no twist at all. But you know what? That's fine. Everything that needed to be tied up got tied up. Some may say that a lot of the main story is never justified with a logical explanation, but that would be like finishing "Dawn of the Dead" and saying, "But what caused the zombie outbreak?" You've missed the point.

I only care about whether or not the main points of the story are wrapped up and with "Midnight Movie," they are.

"Midnight Movie" has a simple, yet creative and fluid premise. Unlike a lot of other horror movies, this movie sets its rules and then actually sticks to them. A lot of franchises like to set rules for their villain only to change them when a scare or plot-point is needed (Nightmare on Elm Street 2 and 4, I'm looking at you). "Midnight Movie," though, never strays from its mythology.

The writing is adequate, the acting is... good enough and the gore is good but not in your face. The gore is just strong enough to get the message across without being disgusting, which I like. With horror today, a lot of the time I'm scared to try a new film out because I can't stand torture porn. Even this movie dabbles in it a bit towards the end but it's no where near "Hostel" or "Saw" territory.

Is the movie scary? I didn't really think so but don't let that dissuade you, it's still very entertaining and does have 2-3 good jump scares. It's not creepy, lock-all-your-doors scary like "Halloween" or anything but it does have the jumps of a decent "Friday the 13th.".

Overall, I liked this movie. It really does work well as a midnight flick. I started this one around 1:30am. It's refreshing to see movies like this and "Dance of the Dead" coming from the horror underground. I'm even happier to say that with the Dimension Extreme releases, Anchor Bay and some others, horror really kinda is thriving right now if only in that underground world.

Til next time, keep the lights low and the volume up. I'll be in the kitchen nuking the popcorn.

"Midnight Movie" -- 8/10.