A Mediocre Midnight Movie

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MOVIE REVIEW: Midnight Movie (2008)

I will admit sometimes when it comes to horror films, I do set my standards quite high.

Whether the film is genuinely scary, has a good plot, likeable characters or is shamelessly gory, there is plenty of fun to be most of the time.

Last night I watched a film I had been looking forward to for a while; Midnight Movie. I had seen it in the supermarket a while back on the cheap and kept it towards the back of my mind to watch at some point.

Sadly the film did not live up to the billing (which I had set), for a slasher film it tried too hard to be complicated with its killer and his own plot.

By revealing the supernatural element surrounding Ted Radford the killer, it certainly takes you away from storyline surrounding his would-be victims as he clearly already has an extreme advantage over them.

Radford starred and directed a slasher film of the 70s, but suffered a mental breakdown after its release, in the present day he escapes to a theatre which is showing the notorious film for the first time in years.

In a nutshell through some supernatural power he lives through the film being played, and becomes a horrific murderer inside the theatre, and begins to hunt down the inhabitans whose deaths are played out on the big screen.

Confused yet? Thought so.

I think basically Midnight Movie was a bit too clever for its own good, and as the film reaches its conclusion it becomes so confusing that the viewer loses a little bit of interest.

Plus the fact that the film is based in a theatre isn’t used to its full effect, as the characters jump from room to room and you don’t really feel that they are trapped as much as you should. More claustrophobic filming techniques needed to be incorporated here.

On the plus side the kills in the film are extremely brutal, with Radford using a giant corkscrew to exact his punishment on victims.

Overall the film fails to shine for not getting the basics of a horror film right, basically attempting to run before it can walk and with a killer with a gammy leg it fails miserably.