During a midnight screening of a rare and obscure 1970's horror flick, patrons in a theater start getting killed off one by one. The most shocking part? The killer.
Just when you thought "Is anything original made anymore?" Here comes Midnight Movie. The premise is the killer from the movie being shown in the theater is somehow able to leap out of said film and kill the people in the audience. How you ask? Fuck if I know. The movie never explains how this maniac can do it. Hell, the movie doesn't really explain any of this guys power. He can teleport, create shields and make a mirage yet he can't seem to fix a bum leg that slows him down. Lazy writing is the most probable reason we never find out. The movie may pay homage to TCM but the killers appearance itself rips off the Chrome Skull killer from the more recent Laid to Rest movie. Brothers maybe?
Anyhoo, the killer suddenly starts leaping out of the movie and picking off patrons one by one. At first, our viewers think it is all a gimmick, even kicking around their friends severed kidney at one point, until the killer returns and starts offing them. Oh I know what your thinking, why not just leave the theater once you find out a killer is after you? Not that easy. This maniac can not only jump off the silver screen, he can also cast a shield around the theater making it impossible for anyone to escape. Add some parallel dimension and an evil mommy and you have all the back story info I do and I
saw the damn film!
The audience is the basic slasher fodder list. Young teens, Heart of Gold biker, movie nerd, renegade cop haunted by his past and some little boy who just wants to see some titty on screen. Bless his lil heart. None of these actors I recognized from a damn thing before so let's just move on.
Oh, the movie they are watching is a Texas Chainsaw Massacre knockoff called The Dark Beneath. Pretty dull title I thinks. For a film supposedly obscure and old, they do a really shitty job making the movie look dated. It has no aging, no grainy look or bad mono audio. In fact, the picture is pretty crisp. So points deducted for laziness there also.
Gore and Nudity you ask? Well the killer wields a homemade corkscrew so we get several stabbings with it. None of which I found very impressive even though he manages to punch it through several guts or toss it into a blokes head. There is a sliced throat and an electrocution which really are the lamest of horror kills when you think about it. The movie nerd states "The kills will get better as the movie progresses". Nope. They didn't. One scant shot of a hippies boob is all we get for nudity so it fails to deliver there also.
Overall the creators present an interesting premise but that is the extent of their ambition. With cliche kills and lazy writing, this film never strives to be anything more than a standard slasher. We are never told how the killer has his powers or even what his goal was or why this obscure film unleashes his wrath. The movie stalls midway through and never moves to the next level which is a shame considering it had promise. Oh well. What the hell.
Post a comment
