After Midnight

I’m such a man; a beer-swilling, football-watching, chair-sitting man with an unnecessary amount of body hair for the most enlightened primate species. It’s my natural inclination to run aghast from any romance-oriented media. Romantic Comedies are all but banned in my house and as a child whenever Blind Date came on the TV, I would go outside and murder tramps instead.

Every so often though, I’ll be in the mood for something a little kissy, huggy, or heartbreaky, but which doesn’t involve sticking your fist down your trousers. You won’t find me reaching for a Diane Keaton flick, or whatever the modern counterpart is (presumably an older Diane Keaton), but if the film has some sort of supernatural or sci-fi slant I’ll begrudgingly give it a go. After Midnight is one such instance.

I picked After Midnight primarily because of the talent involved, my general positive experiences of their previous work, and the fact that the cast and crew always try something different. Plus, it has the same name as one of my favourite Horror Anthologies. Jeremy Gardner directed the delightful The Battery, and writes, stars, and directs here. Brea Grant has been in a tonne of cult shows and movies over the years, and Producers Benson and Moorehead have been involved in the V/H/S series, The Endless, and one of my favourite movies of 2014 – Spring – which is even more of a love story than this!

The story unfolds in a scattered fashion, from present day to various points in the past, as we follow Jeremy Gardner’s Hank who seems to be battling both booze and something creepy in the dark. In between beers, he reminisces about his past love Abby, who has apparently left him for reasons unknown. By day, he sits in his giant yet barren and unkempt house or travels in to town to barely reconnect with friends, all the while drinking, all the time remembering Abby. By night, he is seemingly stalked by a creature which is either trying to get into his house, or to get him. Is it a figment of his imagination or his booze-fuelled haze? Are the locals messing with him? What happened to Abby? Why do I enjoy it when the description presented above makes it sound a bit shit?

Well, it’s all very intriguing. It also has one of the best written and acted scenes I’ve seen in recent years, as Jeremy Gardner and Brea Grant sit and drink and ponder their past, their future, and what lurks beyond. The story unfolds without a care in the world and rather than being a study in romance or an outright horror movie, it feels much more like a paranoid character study using a monster as a metaphor for the outside forces and feelings which surround the maelstrom of any relationship and what can happen if you fail to address them. Slamming the door shut won’t make them go away, yet confronting them may cut you to shreds. Grant and Gardner have a wonderful, realistic chemistry and will dialogue and performances sometimes touch on the mumblecore side of things, everything feels as close to the bone as the jaws of a beast on your arm. It’s not going to be for everyone; if you’re a hairy horror boy like me, you might be dismayed by the lack of scares or the pace. If you’re looking for a happy romance, you’ve come to the wrong house. If you want an honest and forthright glimpse into messy relationship woes with a touch of Jaws thrown in, then perhaps After Midnight is something you’ll love.

Let us know in the comments what you think of After Midnight!

A Quiet Place

You probably know by now that I tend to wait a few years before catching up on new movies – I can’t be arsed driving to the nearest Cinema unless it’s something massive that I need to see, and there’s so many films old and foreign and not released in Cinemas that I watch as well/instead. The downside is that it’s a pain trying to avoid spoilers and by the time I get to writing a review, nobody cares about it anymore. I liked A Quiet Place but enough time has passed and the hype has died down now to the extent that I can say it’s not as good or as revolutionary as many would have you believe and despite an A List cast and interesting premise/gimmick, there’s essentially nothing here you haven’t seen before. The film also falls into standard horror tropes of stupid people doing stupid things for contrived reasons. But we’ll get to that.

The films begins at some point in time past an unexplored cataclysmic event. It appears that most of the human population of the world has been killed by some sort of alien/monster invader who attack by sound. Quite why we were so easily beaten is anyone’s guess but lets suspend such disbelief. We meet one family – a husband and wife and their three young children. The family have all adapted to living, communicating, and travelling in almost complete silence, existing in a remote farm on the outskirts of a remote farm. In the opening scenes we learn, in horrific fashion, just why it is so important to keep quiet. We then flash forward some time to see that the family is still trying to recover from that opening tragedy – dad and daughter have a lack of communication and unspoken blame/guilt thing going on, and mum is heavily pregnant. Daughter is mostly deaf and dad is trying to fix her hearing aid – this seems like it will be important later. Stuff happens and the family home is attacked.

A Quiet Place definitely feels like a B-Movie made for people who don’t like B-Movies. First, there’s the big budget and A-List cast, and secondly it’s made with more skill and subtlety than these sorts of films typically are. At its core though, it’s the same film you’ve seen a hundred times over elsewhere. It is better made but makes most of the same concessions to elicit fear and tension and falls into most of the usual pitfalls and tropes. Like your favourite slasher movie, there are several key moments when you’ll be shaking your head at the decisions characters make, when a more obvious and simple choice would have resolved a problem or saved a life. It lacks the gore and extreme action of many of these films, but makes up for it with a degree of seriousness, drama, and hopeless atmosphere. The most impressive element is the dedication to silence and use of sound, which a lesser film would abandon or fruitlessly exploit. The film was a surprise smash hit, latching on to the current run of so-called (terribly named) elevated horror, and a sequel is currently in the works (and may even be released by the time I post this). The cast each perform their roles with great skill and dedication, with Blunt and Krasinski adept and the young Simmonds and Jupe looking like future stars.

Let us know in the comments what you think of A Quiet Place!

Q: The Winged Serpent: The Cohen Brother’s Best!

Q, or to give it it’s full title- The 8 Exciting Excapades Of Mr Q, The Big Thing, Also Known As Quaker Coat Al, King Of The Mormans, As He Chases Shaft, Kwai Chang, And Michael Moriarty- is basically just a remake of Jaws, but set in space. It has all the same scenes from that movie- a child being mauled to death as he takes his moon buggy for a brief spin; a dead man’s head floating by the spaceship’s port hole, Shaft having his legs bitten off as Q eats through the bottom of the ship. Heck, it even ‘borrows’ some of the famous lines- ‘We’re gonna need a bigger rocket’, ‘we’re gonna need a bigger ship’, ‘Monster! (instead of shark!)’, and ‘Hi’. It is suffice it to say that the famous George Lucas theme tune of the approaching evil is rogued too. While the Jaws music goes like this- Duh duh. Duh duh. Du du du du duh da du du, duh da du du’ and so on, the music in Q goes like this- ‘Duh duh. Duh duh. Du du du du duh da du du, duh da du du’. If that ain’t a slice of the old Rip Off Magee, then I don’t know what is boy!

Anyways, I’m sure if you’ve seen Jaws (or it’s other remake, King Qwong) you’ll know the basic storyboard. Humans have been living on the moon for a few weeks now, but for some reason they are all trapped in the 80s, or possibly the 60s. Drilling for precious moon oil has awoken an ancient beast known as Qod (basically God with a Q) and he ain’t happy! He ain’t happy, but he ain’t not hungry! Q is a giant dragaon type feature, roughly the size of a large squirrel, and he can fly. He can’t breath fire, but he ain’t not hungry! He feasts on space tramps and rocks and takes off towards the main city- Earth Part Two. Soon it is a race against time for the spacemen to work together and bring down this awesome foe.

I like the graphics in this film- they are some of the best I have ever scene, and I like the fact that they filmed on the moon, with Neil Armstrong’s permission. There is plenty of gore and killings, and the excitements are kept high on the scale- about 340lbs worth, give or take. What the film really needed was a big monster fight- they should have dug up another alien and had a smackdown rumble fest where they both smelled what the other had cookin’. This is a lovely piece of filming, Michael Douglas should be proud.

Best Scene: Patrick Moore’s cameo. He is discussing the possibility of life on other planets at the start of the show, then it cuts to him going to his dressing room. Later when his director goes to pick him up for his next shoot, and spins his chair round he is dead and Q has crawled out of his eye! You know which one.