Midnight Movie (film)

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Midnight Movie is a 2008 American slasher film directed and co-written by Jack Messitt, produced by Kacy Andrews, and based on a story by Sean Hood. It stars Rebekah Brandes, Daniel Bonjour, Greg Cirulnick, Mandell Maughan, and Stan Ellsworth. The film was produced by Bigfoot Entertainment and distributed by Peace Arch Entertainment. Its runtime is 82 minutes and it was made on a budget of about $1 million.

Plot
Forty years after directing and starring in a slasher movie called The Dark Beneath, director Ted Radford suffers a mental breakdown and is treated in a psychiatric ward. His doctors show him The Dark Beneath as part of his therapy. Five years later, a local theater screens The Dark Beneath for the first time since the murders. The theater staff—Bridget and Josh—and a group of customers, including Timmy (Bridget’s younger brother), a biker couple, a detective, and others, watch the film. As the movie begins, people in the theater start getting murdered by the same masked killer from the film, and the deaths are shown to the audience as if they’re real. The group realizes the killings are happening in real life. They try to escape, but the killer stalks them through the theater and into the surrounding building.

The situation grows more desperate as the group battles fear and the killer. Bridget and Timmy eventually learn they must ignore their fear to survive. Bridget finds herself pulled into the movie’s world, where she discovers the killer’s victims are still alive in cages. She helps free them and fights to escape, with Timmy by her side. In the end, Bridget sacrifices herself to remain trapped in the film world to allow Timmy to return to the real world. Police arrive to find Timmy as the sole survivor.

Release, home media and reception
Midnight Movie premiered at the Chicago Horror Film Festival on September 27, 2008, and was released in the United States on October 24, 2008. It later reached DVD on January 6, 2009, and Blu-ray on October 13, 2009 (with Phase 4 Films handling Canadian distribution). Phase 4 re-released it as part of a Horror 4 Pack in 2011.

Critical reception was mixed. Michael Gingold of Fangoria praised the film for delivering genuine jolts rather than just gross-outs. Andrew Smith of Popcorn Pictures gave it 5/10, calling it a familiar and not particularly original slasher.