Crew
Director – Jack Messitt, Screenplay – Mark Garbett & Jack Messitt, Story – Sean Hood, Producers – Kacy Andrews, Liam Finn & Jacques Thelemaque, Photography – Ruben F. Russ & Clyde Smith, Music – Penka Kouneva, Visual Effects – Pixel Magic (Supervisor – Ray McIntyre Jr.), Special Effects/Makeup Effects – Lunar Effects, Production Design – Bradd Wesley Fillman. Production Company – Bigfoot Entertainment/Filmmakers Alliance.
Cast
Rebekah Brandes (Bridget), Daniel Bonjour (Josh), Jon Briddell (Detective Barrons), Greg Cirulnick (Mario), Stan Ellsworth (Harley), Michael Schwartz (Sully), Brea Grant (Rachel), Mandell Maughan (Samantha), Melissa Steach (Babe), Justin Baric (Timmy), Shaun Ausmus (Kenny), Michael Swan (Dr Wayne), Carol Stanzione (Mother), Lee Main (Killer), Ashley Black (Jackie), James Michael Mahoney (Bobby), Kathryn Aagesen (Monica), Dinora Walcott (Lucinda), Arthur Roberts (Ted Radford)
Plot
A theatre is holding a midnight movie screening of the obscure 1970s film The Dark Beneath. The film has a legendary reputation as its director Ted Radford is reputed to have killed people for real on screen. Five years earlier, a screening was held for Radford where he was incarcerated in an asylum, but he mysteriously vanished in the midst. Detective Barrons attends the screening, believing that Radford might make an appearance. The theatre’s manager Bridget is persuaded by her boyfriend Josh and friends to take the night off and join them at the screening. However, as the film begins, the film’s killer appears in the theatre and begins to slaughter various of the attendees. At the same time, the others are able to see the murders occurring up on the screen.
Midnight Movie is the only film directed by Jack Messitt who the rest of the time works as a cinematographer, usually in tv. Elsewhere, Messitt has co-written the futuristic Hong Kong thriller Control (2013), but that is it. The film apparently did well in dvd sales. In 2011, Messitt released his preferred version, the ‘Killer Cut’, the version seen here, which actually runs seven minutes shorter than the original theatrical release.
Midnight Movie came out just after Grindhouse (2007) – see Death Proof (2007) and Planet Terror (2007). You can see that Jack Messitt is trying to do mimic Tarantino and Rodriguez’s movie homage thing. He even copies the broken sprocket and scratched, flickering frame look, while homaging 1970s Backwoods Brutality cinema in his film-within-the-film. The film being screened seems to be a fairly blatant copy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) – the group of young people of the era on a trip in a van, their straying inside a country house, being attacked and slaughtered by a hulking figure who hides his face behind a mask.
The idea of the horror film about horrors emerging from a movie screen was first done in Lamberto Bava’s Demons (1985) and the very weird Anguish (1987). The work that Midnight Movie most resembles is Popcorn (1991), which had horrors seem to emerge from a film where occult sacrifices were supposedly made during the shooting. The film is also unrelated to Midnight Movie (1994), a Dennis Potter tv play that has a similar plot where a horror film airing on tv comes to blur into an unsolved murder from the past.
That said, I don’t think Jack Messitt does a particularly great job of developing the concept. The plot is something to do with a director who may have gone crazy and killed people and filmed it. When the film is screened, the killer on the screen appears to come to life and slaughter members in the audience. At the same time as people can see the deaths of victims projected on the screen above them – an idea that cries out for more expansion and explanation. Most of the rest of Midnight Movie is the killer slaughtering attendees as they flee and try to escape. The killer wields what looks like a conical shaped corkscrew about the size of a regular jug, which seems like some prop designer’s attempts to create a novel murder weapon that only looks absurd on screen.
Trailer here