At a run down theater in a sleepy suburban town, a group of friends get together for a midnight screening of an early 1970s horror film. What they do not know is that the Director/Star of the film has something more in store for them than just a movie.
While he is thought to have died five years earlier in a psych ward massacre, the detective and doctor who witnessed the aftermath of the bloodbath suspect that the director was not a victim, but the perpetrator of the killings and is still on the loose.
What none of them understand is that he has enshrined his soul into the film itself.
As the film starts, the kids heckle the old black-and-white scenes, but are jolted when the movie's gruesome killer butchers one of their friends on screen! They realize that it is not the prank that they had hoped it was as they soon become the stars of the very movie they are watching on the screen.
Caught between the world of reality and the screen's flickering shadows, these unsuspecting viewers fight to stay alive in the locked theater.
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
Jack Messitt
The horror genre has gone through a great transformation in the past decade. We have left traditional slasher films like Friday the 13th behind and brought the world of the supernatural to a new level with Japanese films like Ringu and Ju-On and their US remakes The Ring and The Grudge. With Saw and Hostel, horror movies elevated to a realm of gore that had been only touched on by their predecessors. Our challenge with Midnight Movie was to try to create a more traditional slasher film that would satisfy the audience that had embraced these newer films.
Due to the supernatural nature of our story, we were able to create a villain that paid homage to the past, but with a fresh approach. It was fun to explore what a more traditional slasher villain would do in a modern film.
To help achieve this, I structured Midnight Movie to mirror the history of horror films. In the beginning, you see what happens just before and just after a massacre. The next kill reveals a bit more and with each successive murder, you see even more, escalating to the gore that today's audiences expect.
But when shooting the gruesome climax of Midnight Movie, we retreated a bit from the obvious gore because I believe what you don't see is much scarier and ultimately more satisfying. The mind will always fill in the gaps in a much more terrifying way than a filmmaker can portray.
Rebekah Brandes (Bridget)
Daniel Bonjour (Josh)
Mandell Maughan (Samantha)
Greg Cirulnick (Mario)
Stan Ellsworth (Harley)
Melissa Steach (Babe)
Jon Briddell (Det. Barrons)
Michael Swan (Dr. Wayne)
Michael Schwartz (Sully)
Justin Baric (Timmy)
Arthur Roberts (Radford)
Lee Main (The Killer)
Director/ Writer: Jack Messitt
Producers: Kacy Andrews, Liam Finn, Jacques Thelemaque
Executive Producer: Michael Gleissner
Writer: Mark Garbett
Line producer: Albert Hasson
Directors of photography: Clyde Smith, Ruben Russ
Production designer: Bradd Fillman
Editor: Kris Villarino
Costume designer: Charlotte Kruse
Casting: Tara-Anne Johnson, Christine Scowley