Episode 737 - After Midnight (2019)

Hi everyone!

It’s Friday, so we’re back with another Fantastic Fest review from Andrew Campbell. After trying to guess the plot for the last few movies, I have decided to stop doing that. I think this film was entitled AFTER MIDNIGHT, but it was actually SOMETHING ELSE. That was the original title, actually. SOMETHING ELSE. Andrew’s gonna let it all hang out in a minute, but for a few other recent reviews from Andrew, check out JALLIKATTU (Episode #730), THE CALL OF THE WILD (Episode #726), and BLISS (Episode #723).

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Here we go!

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Hello film fans!

Andrew here. Back with your weekly dose of Fantastic Fest goodness. Today’s movie is the first film from last year’s Fantastic Fest that I got that chance to watch - not at the festival itself, but at home the week beforehand. I got a screener link to this one and my excitement for checking out really any film from the upcoming festival was ratcheted up to the max. I’ll be up front and say that this one did not live up to my overly lofty expectations, but in hindsight this is a film that has stuck with me more than most.

Today’s movie is AFTER MIDNIGHT (2019), written by Jeremy Gardner and co-directed by Gardner and Christian Stella. Gardner directs himself in the lead role of Hank, a bar owner in a rural southern town. Hank and his girlfriend of ten years, Abby (Brea Grant), reside together in an old ancestral home surrounded by overgrowth and with no neighbors in sight. Discontent with their simple life waiting for marriage that may never happen, one day Abby disappears, leaving nothing but a note behind. Beleaguered Hank begins to lose his grip, spending his days with his buddies at the bar and his evenings protecting his house from what he insists is a monster that visits each night and left its mark on his front door.

This is a low-budget independent film so it’s kind of an easy target to nitpick. The film uses a series of flashbacks to set up the early days of Hank and Abby after they first move into the house. These scenes drag on longer than needed and feature both forced acting and sugary prose. The film’s atmospheric score feels misplaced here and (at least with the cut I saw) is loud enough to wash out parts of the dialogue.

From a character perspective, every scene centers on Hank. We eventually get a good sense of who Hank is, though his likability may vary by viewer. Abby receives short shrift in the establishing shots - she’s cute and affable, yet fairly one-dimensional. But do not despair. If this were a relationship drama, I might have checked out early on. However, this is a Fantastic Fest selection, so you know the story is going to go somewhere unexpected.

What initially drew me to this film was two of the producers, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. Together, Benson and Moorhead co-directed two Certified Fresh films beloved to genre film fans. 2014’s SPRING unleashed the body horror and 2017’s THE ENDLESS told the story of a UFO death cult. Well, that duo returned to Fantastic Fest in 2019 with their producer credit on AFTER MIDNIGHT, as well as the US premiere of their co-written and co-directed film SYNCHRONIC starring Jamie Dornan & Anthony Mackie which, six months after the festival, I have still yet to see.

Back to the movie at hand. You can see some of the same touches that worked so well in the other Benson and Moorhead films. These are tales of unremarkable people going about their days in a world where mystical forces that may or may not be real lurk just out of sight. Some indie horror films come out of the gate swinging and hit a lull by the midpoint, but AFTER MIDNIGHT does the opposite. It takes a little time getting into and improves leaps and bounds after the first twenty minutes as you settle in with these characters and wait for the other shoe to drop.

What makes AFTER MIDNIGHT fantastic? The film patiently holds back its best bits for the end. In a movie that clocks in at just over 80 minutes, Jeremy Gardner inserted a 13-minute single-camera, slow-zoom, uninterrupted, heart-to-heart chat between Hank and Abby that is near-perfect and sits in stark contrast to their shared scenes near the beginning. You also get Hank singing Lisa Loeb’s “Stay” nearly in its entirety at a dinner party before a particularly rude interruption. Gardner may have struggled to start this movie, but he sure knows how to end it.

AFTER MIDNIGHT is a southern, homestyle slow-burn mystery that straddles multiple genres. Fans of relationship-driven genre films such as the aforementioned SPRING, WARM BODIES, or the hidden gem BOKEH, starring Maika Monroe, will enjoy this film.

Rotten Tomatoes: 86%

Metacritic: 54

One Movie Punch: 7.0/10

AFTER MIDNIGHT (2019) is rated TV-MA and is available now on VOD.

Come back next Friday for SWALLOW, a visually stunning picture about a woman suffering in an abusive relationship who develops a rare disorder known as pica, in which she finds herself eating household objects. It’s a dark, emotional ride, well out of my comfort zone, so listen to me struggle to analyze this one as it comes out in limited release.

See you then!