(Cool) Shite on the Tube – Film, TV, Comics, Games, Books, Genre Pop Culture.

Review

Midnight Movie – Movie Review

  • Directed by Jack Messitt
  • Starring Arthur Roberts, Rebekah Brandes, Michael Swan, Jon Briddell, Daniel Bonjour, Brea Grant, Shaun Ausmus, Stan Ellsworth and Melissa Steach

The film opens with disturbed director Ted Radford (Roberts) being safely held behind the bars of the local loony bin after turning murderous years earlier, but his doctors get the great idea that watching his film The Dark Beneath will be a useful part of his therapy. Radford begins to chew at his own wrists during said viewing (everyone’s a critic! Rimshot!) and scribbles a bunch of arcane symbols on the floor in his own blood before going on a rampage that leaves the hospital dripping with blood, but no bodies are ever found.

Jumping ahead five years, a small theater is set to do a midnight showing of The Dark Beneath, and Dr. Wayne (Swan) and Detective Barrons (Briddell) are convinced that if anything will draw out the missing director, it’s the first showing of his film in half a decade. They don’t bother to tell anyone about their theory, instead are happy to blend into the ‘crowd’ of filmgoers, and by crowd, I mean the 7 people who turn out for the film, 3 of which are friends of the theater manager and other hangers on, so I can see why the ‘Midnight Movie’ screening concept has fallen off in recent years, it doesn’t appear very lucrative.

There’s some ‘getting to know you’ bits to introduce theater manager Bridget (Brandes) and her boyfriend Josh (Bonjour), along with another couple they’re friends with, plus the usual cannon fodder working concession & projection, Rachael (Grant) and Kenny (Ausmus), respectively, then we’re off to the races as The Dark Beneath unspools.

The black and white film is set up in typical fashion; a group of kids have car trouble and go looking for help at the wrong house, etc. etc. This is interspersed with scenes of a skull-masked killer sharpening a large and unwieldy cork-screw tool that he’ll use to dispatch them. Oh, and in typical low-budget fashion, the film is written, directed, stars and was most likely catered by Ted Radford, his name appearing a half dozen times in the film-within-a-film’s credits; it’s kind of amusing. The audience is also typical of a theatrical experience: the only two paying customers, biker Harley (Ellsworth) and his Babe (Steach) find themselves annoyed at the 4 other people in the theater talking and horsing around. Damned kids!

It doesn’t take long for Kenny to be dispatched to the creepy unlit basement to replace one of the soda fountains’ syrup refills, where the killer from the film turns up and makes short work of him. The film showing in the theater warps mysteriously at this moment, showing the audience Kenny’s death from the killer’s POV, which is odd because none of his friends/acquaintances even recognizes him, or the location in which he dies, which you’d think might ring a few bells, at least for the THEATER MANAGER. In the back row of the theater we get some plot exposition from the Detective and Doc about Radford’s past and then the resident movie know-it-all type leaves the herd to go to the bathroom and be picked off by old Skull-face. The film flips to the killer’s POV again, and they actually notice this time, but assume that they’re being pranked by someone, especially when they investigate and find no body, only ‘fake’ blood on the floor. Once the POV of the film flips to the lobby and they can’t find Rachael’s corpse, they finally begin to get suspicious and look for a way out, by which time it of course much too late.

I was with the concept of the film up to this point, as it started out all slasher-y, but then it took an unexpected turn towards a supernatural killer. I’m thinking, okay, this is different, odd weapon of choice, but whatever, I’m willing to buy into it. When they try to escape the building, they find themselves trapped inside, and the supernatural elements extend to this inevitability, as the glass doors won’t shatter, etc., proving that they are indeed up against malevolent forces rather than just some jerk-off director who became obsessed with his work. There’s an annoying addition of Bridget’s younger brother, who has snuck into the theater to give us that bad child actor to be frustrated with, and as the film gets into its’ final act it takes another turn in the tone, getting down right Hostel-ish in the vivid torture, which just seemed a little much after we’d already switched gears twice at this stage of things.

I think I’m rating this lower than a lot of other people on the web have, if only because it felt like such a schizophrenic viewing experience, never settling into the tone it wanted to convey, jumping from ‘hey it’s a crazy guy’ to ‘no, wait, it’s a boogeyman-type’ to ‘hey, isn’t this gross when we torture people?’ to the point that I just started to not really care anymore. I will give it credit for hitting the ground running with the hinted around dark arts in the beginning when Radford disappears, then leaping into character intros before getting down to the red stuff, but it doesn’t pay that good faith off in the end.

Also it’s funny to note that the sixties era hippies in The Dark Beneath manage to end up in a very 70’s Exploitation feeling setting, with some kills that feel straight out of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, then the set-up of the midnight screening owes a bit to the 80’s, and finally the meta-textual killer is reminiscent of Scream and other self aware and knowing post modern horror films. The whole experience is an interesting crash course in the genre, but I never felt 100% committed to any of it, thus the lower score.

I’d say the film is worth a look for horror fans, but you may find elements of it frustrating.

Purchase Now – Help (Cool) Shite

Trailer

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Both comments and pings are currently closed.

About The Author

Kingmob

Kingmob has been spending his time writing online reviews for the better part of two years and has nothing but the ability to speak about himself in the 3rd person to show for it. This review and others like it can be found at Big Suck Loser and you can read about the daily minutiae that drives him slowly mad and informs his useless opinions of pop culture at his blog, Dear Bastards.

Bookmark This

  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • MySpace
  • StumbleUpon
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • email
  • FriendFeed
  • Print
  • Twitter

Article Information

  • Posted: Saturday, November 7th, 2009
  • Author: Kingmob
  • Filed Under: Film,Review
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments

Comments are closed.

Latest (Cool) Shite Shows