Midnight Movie

Midnight Movie brings The Rocky Horror Picture Show to mind, but no, this movie is not like the Picture Show at all. Midnight Movie centers around a group of friends who are heading to see a late night screening of an obscure 70’s film, titled The Dark Beneath. The film hasn’t been screened in 5 years, and the last time the film was shown, it was in a mental institution where the director has been a captive for decades. The result of the showing is a bloodbath with nearly 70 people dead and a missing director. The film will be screened once more and the audience will discover just what happened that night at the asylum.

The movie its self is a cross between “Popcorn” and Woody Allen’s “Purple Rose of Cairo”. Midnight Movie asks the question, “What if a serial killer could be separated from the screen he’s playing on in order to kill the audience who’s watching?” The movie has its standard slasher moments and sets the teenage victims of the film up nicely before executing them in a series of deaths which would make Hannibal Lecter cry. The movie has everything it needs to be great, but the execution of the killer in the movie is less than savory.

He’s dressed in a pair of baggy overalls and sports a half-skull face mask which periodically changes for no reason. The killer murders his victims with an over sized drill bit which is fixed to a hand grip. He uses the device to gouge huge chucks out of his victim’s torso’s and even through the eyes of one unfortunate victim. The problem isn’t the manner of execution the killer uses, it’s the fact that it gets really old, really quick. The killer doesn’t really mix up his death and carnage except for one instance in which he electrocutes one of the teens, but this straying from the norm for the killer is hardly satisfying. It feels as if the directors ran out of creativeness on this part of the film and just decided that each of the teenagers should die in much the same fashion.

Over all, the movie isn’t too bad, if you can handle the repetitiveness of the killings. The director and producers have done a great job of creating a top notch environment for their little uninspired killer to roam in, as the old theater is actually pretty creepy. Though the killer in the film lacks any sort of personality, such as you’d expect from a horror icon, the film still doesn’t do bad to provide a few cheep thrills and scares here and there.