Midnight Movie starts at New Haven mental institution as inmate & raving loony Ted Radford (Arthur Roberts) is sat down by his doctor to watch the old black and white horror film the Dark Beneath he made several decades ago, once the film starts all hell breaks loose & over seventy ward patients & staff go missing leaving nothing but bloody stains everywhere. Jump forward 'Five Years Later' & an old cinema is about to have a special midnight showing of The Dark Beneath, the first time it has been shown in public for forty years. Pretty teenager & cinema manager Bridget (Rebekah Brandes), her boyfriend Josh (Daniel Bonjour) & several other teens decide to watch the film along with a few other people including surviving psych ward doctor & investigating cop who still puzzle over the unsolved massacre at New Haven & feel the answer lies with the film & when the audience starts getting killed one by one it seems they may be right...
Co-written & directed by Jack Messitt one has to say that I thought Midnight Movie was a pretty terrible teen slasher with unexplained & rather baffling supernatural elements that make little sense. The basic script has various people watching a teen slasher obviously ripped-off from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) & them being killed off by the killer from the film who just sort of randomly pops up every so often with a silly looking weapon that resembles either a corkscrew or a piece of abstract modern art. So if you decide to give Midnight Movie a look what ends up happening is that the audience (us) watch a teen slasher film about a teen audience in a cinema watching a teen slasher film, got that? Midnight Movie is a sort of crap cross between The Last Action Hero (1993) & The Texas Chainsaw Massacre if you can imagine such a thing. The biggest problem I had with Midnight Movie was that nothing is explained or given any sort of rationalisation, there's no explanation as to why the film The Dark Beneath has the unusual effect of turning it's fictional killer real, why he kills anyone anyway, what Ted Radford actually had to do with it in the first place, why the victims are dead in reality but alive in the film, why the cop couldn't see the people screaming for help or why the doors are locked tight & the glass seems to be bullet proof to prevent anyone from leaving. There's also the lame revelation that the needs his victims to be scared of him for him to be able to kill them, what? To add insult to injury if the main slasher film wasn't bad enough we also get various chunks of black and white footage from the film actually playing at the cinema The dark beneath which is also crap. The teen character's are crap, the authority figures are incompetent & there's even an annoying little kid actor who doesn't get killed. There's a lot of time spent running around the cinema before the last survivor gets taken back into the film & the setting changes but not to any great effect as it's still the same sort of thing. At 80 odd minutes at least it's short & there are one or two mildly gory kills but there's little here to recommend & there are so many much better teen slasher films out there there's really no need to bother with this lacklustre seemingly random film.
The killer here is never revealed as to who he is but like the Leatherface rip-off he is he wears a face mask made out of stapled together bits of skull bone & for some reason the makers have given him a limp. There's some gore here with a fair bit of blood splatter, wrist biting, a slit throat, some toe torture & the killer shoves, twists & pokes his corkscrew weapon into various people. There is no nudity here apart from one breast shot which doesn't help. The film within the film The Dark Beneath plays in black and white & starts off with some very fake looking scratch lines which miraculously clear up & is frankly just as bad as the main film. Theree are no real scares here & the tension is low & if the killer can materialise wherever he wants why doesn't he materialise inside locked rooms where people are hiding towards the end?
With a supposed budget of about $1,000,000 according to the IMDb this looks alright & has reasonable production values, apparently film in Los Angeles. The acting isn't that good with even the main lead leading female not that much to look at.
Midnight Movie is a forgettable title for a forgettable slasher that has no explanation behind it's seemingly random plot & a killer who is a blatant Leatherface rip-off, not even a short 80 minute duration & some minor gore can save this one.
Co-written & directed by Jack Messitt one has to say that I thought Midnight Movie was a pretty terrible teen slasher with unexplained & rather baffling supernatural elements that make little sense. The basic script has various people watching a teen slasher obviously ripped-off from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) & them being killed off by the killer from the film who just sort of randomly pops up every so often with a silly looking weapon that resembles either a corkscrew or a piece of abstract modern art. So if you decide to give Midnight Movie a look what ends up happening is that the audience (us) watch a teen slasher film about a teen audience in a cinema watching a teen slasher film, got that? Midnight Movie is a sort of crap cross between The Last Action Hero (1993) & The Texas Chainsaw Massacre if you can imagine such a thing. The biggest problem I had with Midnight Movie was that nothing is explained or given any sort of rationalisation, there's no explanation as to why the film The Dark Beneath has the unusual effect of turning it's fictional killer real, why he kills anyone anyway, what Ted Radford actually had to do with it in the first place, why the victims are dead in reality but alive in the film, why the cop couldn't see the people screaming for help or why the doors are locked tight & the glass seems to be bullet proof to prevent anyone from leaving. There's also the lame revelation that the needs his victims to be scared of him for him to be able to kill them, what? To add insult to injury if the main slasher film wasn't bad enough we also get various chunks of black and white footage from the film actually playing at the cinema The dark beneath which is also crap. The teen character's are crap, the authority figures are incompetent & there's even an annoying little kid actor who doesn't get killed. There's a lot of time spent running around the cinema before the last survivor gets taken back into the film & the setting changes but not to any great effect as it's still the same sort of thing. At 80 odd minutes at least it's short & there are one or two mildly gory kills but there's little here to recommend & there are so many much better teen slasher films out there there's really no need to bother with this lacklustre seemingly random film.
The killer here is never revealed as to who he is but like the Leatherface rip-off he is he wears a face mask made out of stapled together bits of skull bone & for some reason the makers have given him a limp. There's some gore here with a fair bit of blood splatter, wrist biting, a slit throat, some toe torture & the killer shoves, twists & pokes his corkscrew weapon into various people. There is no nudity here apart from one breast shot which doesn't help. The film within the film The Dark Beneath plays in black and white & starts off with some very fake looking scratch lines which miraculously clear up & is frankly just as bad as the main film. Theree are no real scares here & the tension is low & if the killer can materialise wherever he wants why doesn't he materialise inside locked rooms where people are hiding towards the end?
With a supposed budget of about $1,000,000 according to the IMDb this looks alright & has reasonable production values, apparently film in Los Angeles. The acting isn't that good with even the main lead leading female not that much to look at.
Midnight Movie is a forgettable title for a forgettable slasher that has no explanation behind it's seemingly random plot & a killer who is a blatant Leatherface rip-off, not even a short 80 minute duration & some minor gore can save this one.