I’d have rated Midnight Movie even higher but it takes a weird, tacked-on-feeling turn in the final 15 minutes.
Horror movie plots don’t always make a lot of sense. Sometimes, if you turn off your brain and roll with the ridiculous logic, there’s a good time to be had. Such is the case with Midnight Movie, a low-budget independent slasher film released in early 2009. The movie is centered around a man named Ted Radford, who wrote, starred in, and directed a slasher movie in the 1970s. He then became so obsessed by the film, he was committed to an insane asylum. One of the doctors in the asylum decides to show Radford the film as part of his “treatment.” Everyone in the hospital ends up dead, Radford goes missing, and the only evidence left behind are strange symbols drawn in blood on the floor.
Flash forward five years, a local theater owner decides to show Radford’s film — called The Dark Beneath — as a midnight movie. Detective Barrons (Jon Briddell,) who’s been investigating the murderous spree at the hospital, suspects Radford may show up at the first public screening of his movie in years and decides to attend. We’re also introduced to the theater’s crew of teenage employees and a few of their friends who decide to attend the movie because it looks like dumb fun. What no one expects is that not only Radford will make an appearance, but he’s somehow gained the ability to jump in and out of the film à la Last Action Hero. Not only that, but he’s also trapped everyone inside the theater using some sort of supernatural force field.
The screening of The Dark Beneath allows the audience to see Radford’s creation as a movie-within-a-movie. So, we get to enjoy the experience along with the characters in the theater for awhile. That is, until Radford jumps into the present day and starts picking off the theater patrons and employees. The resulting movie — the one we’re watching — becomes a fun tribute to 1980s slasher films with a nod towards the 1970s as well. Sure, the acting never approaches anything beyond mediocre. The bizarre story makes little sense. But, Midnight Movie provides horror fans with a heaping spoonful of humor along with the gore.
I’d have rated Midnight Movie even higher but it takes a weird, tacked-on-feeling turn in the final 15 minutes. It felt like the writers didn’t feel confident enough in their concept, so they felt they had to throw a change-up pitch at the audience. While I won’t spoil what happens, it just doesn’t fit the charm of the previous 67 minutes of the movie.
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
