Midnight Movie

Year of Release: 2008
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 5 / 10
Level of Awful: Surprise!

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

I love watching bad horror movies so much that I’ve dedicated an entire blog to them, but after watching too many even my brain threatens to turn to mush. That’s why I decided to watch Midnight Movie – I’d read up about it and it looked like it had some promise. And it didn’t disappoint! There’s nothing very original about this movie (it’s a sort of Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets The Hills Run Red) but it’s 80 minutes of pure slasher heaven with a mix-and-match group of soon-to-be-victims trying to outrun a deranged lunatic with a limp. There are scares and jumps and ominous moments with blood on the walls and guts on the floor; in short it’s fun, mindless horror 😀

The writing's on the floor...

Back in the day when movies were still black and white Ted Radford wrote, directed, produced and starred in a movie called The Dark Beneath. Ted unfortunately went a little off the rails when he became so obsessed with his film that he started to believe that he was the killer in it and murdered his cast and crew. Years later he’s been locked away in an insane asylum for quite some time when his doctor decides that it’s time to attempt a breakthrough with his patient. The best way to break Ted’s obsession with The Dark Beneath, in the good doctor’s opinion, is to let him watch it again and realise that it’s only a movie, not reality. As is often the case this doesn’t go exactly to plan and the screening pushes Ted even further over the edge before he decides to murder every single other person in the asylum and make his escape.

I can see you talking in the back row!

5 years after Radford made his escape from the loony bin a little movie theater is planning a midnight screening of The Dark Beneath. Det. Barrons, who oversaw the police investigation at the asylum, is convinced that Radford will turn up since it’s the first screening of the movie since he went missing. The rest of the police department think that he’s insane since they believe a cult broke into the asylum and Radford was killed along with everyone else. Thankfully the one person who feels the same way he does is Dr Wayne, the only doctor who thought showing Radford his movie again would have been a bad idea. Along with these two we have Bridget (the manager at the theater), her boyfriend Josh, their friends Mario and Samantha, a biker couple named Harley and Babe, horror nerd Sully and Rachael and Kenny, two other kids who work at the theater. With everyone comfy and buckets of popcorn at the ready they settle down to watch the movie.

Use a breath mint sir...

You know shit’s gonna hit the fan when Josh tells Bridget, who’s had a few issues with her father, that as long as he’s around nobody’s gonna hurt her. The movie starts off alright but takes an odd turn when the film switches to a POV shot of the theater itself with Kenny being impaled on the murderer’s weapon. Everyone in the theater thinks it’s a joke and continues to laugh when the same thing happens to Sully and Rachael. When everyone goes to look for the three missing kids, however, they figure out (with the help of the detective) that the blood on the floor is real and that every time the movie switches to a POV shot Radford (dressed as the killer from the film) is hunting someone else down. But like every good horror villain you can hit Radford with a baseball bat and you can even shoot him a few times but he’s just gonna keep on limping after you – and murder you in good, black and white movie style.

THINGS I’VE LEARNED:

• Testosterone is the natural order of the universe.
• Biker chicks are remarkably understanding when their boyfriends get turned on by other women.
• When a massacre occurs at a mental asylum you should never go looking for the one person that’s missing.
• A liver makes a great soccer ball.
• Stoners are drawn to houses with creepy old ladies living in them.
• Chivalry isn’t dead, but it may end up in you being dead.
• “Let’s stick together” means “let’s split up gradually”.
• You never have bullets when you wanna make the killshot.
• Telling a deranged killer “you gotta go through me first” usually means he will take you literally.

MIDNIGHT MOVIE TRAILER