As the horror industry is a killer, more and more horror films are being released straight to video. This short-life span has made much of the public overlook the rare great frights that you can come across in the video store. Such is the case with 2008's Midnight Movie that is helmed by first time director and 2008 Chicago Horror Film Festival Best Feature award winner, Jack Messit.
The film is your typical slasher. Psycho stalks a group of individuals, knocking them off one by one as they scurry around hallway corners and the dark alleyways of the night; clearly making the cover of the DVD case make you immediately wanting to put it back down due to the typical straight to video slasher prototypes . But fans of horror should think twice.
This unique horror tale is about a crazed committed man that is obsessed with a film he directed over 40 years prior. With a unique developing premise, the film begins with stylish shots (2008 Chicago Horror Film Festival best cinematography) of the insane man twitching furiously as his film "The Dark Beneath" is presented to him as the nearby doctors rant, "Should we really be showing this to him?".
With your typical cliche opening, encompassing your casual Saw franchise style, fast-cutting graphics and heavy metal music, fans might immediately get turned off. Although the film picks up by showing the hospital a blood fest of a building, we see "five years later" at the bottom of the screen and notice the man that has been presented the film has been missing for nearly half a decade now. The film that he watched, "The Dark Beneath" is now being presented at a seedy, downtown movie theater that excels in its midnight showings of cult horror films. With your typical WB styled cast, Midnight Movie is reminiscent of "the horror film that takes place in a movie theater" type fare as are Lamberto Bava's Demons (1985), Popcorn (1991), and the opening of Scream 2 (1997); making it a "shine" of the times type film.
Clearly a social commentary of the impacting effects of horror films on viewers, Midnight Movie is presented as tongue-in-cheek as many of the characters begin watching "The Dark Beneath" and declaring, "Betcha it's the blond chick that gets naked...Hey it's a horror movie somebody always gets naked!" The film becomes always predicable as they feature the dorky guy that knows all there is to know about the slasher genre as he cracks comments left and right. As the characters begin to watch the film we notice many of them coming out too blatantly with comments that will depict the rest of the film; i.e. "Like a roller coaster...scary but safe." and the rebuttal "But roller-coasters crash too..." Immediately viewers of Midnight Movie will begin to dive into the world that is created by writer Mark Garbett and get a sense of the non-existence character development and cliche characters it's 82 minute world possesses.
Soon enough it is revealed that "The Dark Beneath" has been directed by a crazed, murderous psychopath (remember the old guy in the first few minutes of the film?) and he is going to be coming back for more, but in this case what is shown on the screen allows the killer to jump out of the film and kill its victims, dragging them back into the celluloid. With an almost science fiction, twilight zone-ish tone, Midnight Movie at sometimes feels like it would of worked best as an episode of Tales from the Crypt or the latter.
With great, easy gore effects, from Lunar Effects, we have been presented a slasher killer that uses a giant cork screw styled weapon that pierces its victims. In a great shot where he kabobs two victims, Lunar Effects did a great job at presenting some classic old school styled gory moments, allowing Midnight Movie to still please the hardcore gore fans out there. The film also boasts elaborate, detailed set design considering the film is a low budget and was shot in a mere four weeks in LA.
With the "movie within a movie mythos", the latest horror crazed straight to video film Midnight Movie (2008) is the same old slasher cliche styled film but with an energetic twist that makes it an entertaining, rollercoaster-spookhouse-ride of a film, even if it does suffer the straight to video epidemic that is constantly taking place with thousands of horror films around the nation.
Source:
http://www.examiner.com
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