Midnight Movie is an extremely watered down mix of Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Saw, and Scream minus all the fun and mass appeal. Just because I mentioned those classic horror movie franchises does not in any way mean Midnight Movie is even in the same league. I have seen a lot of B-rated and low budget horror movies in my life and don’t even think it ranks anywhere near the upper echelon of those movies.

 Midnight Movie takes place in an old decrepit movie theater that is being managed by Bridget (Rebekah Brandes). On this particular night, they are having a viewing of a 40 year old movie, “The Dark Beneath”, that was directed by Ted Radford (Arthur Roberts), who had not been seen after he escaped an insane asylum that he slaughtered. For reasons unknown, Bridget’s boyfriend, Josh (Daniel Bonjour), her little brother, Timmy (Justin Baric), a couple of her friends, a biker and his girlfriend, a detective looking for Radford, and several other people attend the viewing and are locked in the theatre being forced to watch the horrible movie.

During the movie, it would cut out and show killings happening in the movie theater and then cut back into the movie. Somehow the killer would leave the movie, kill a victim, and bring them back into the movie. Halfway through the movie, the audience finally notices it’s real and figure out the staff members and their friends are being killed one by one. For the rest of the movie, everyone switches to survival and escape mode amidst a killer running around slashing away at anything that moves.

I understand that horror movies in general are known for their bad acting, lack of character development, and a huge lack of storyline. This movie does not disappoint in these areas. The bad acting was apparent every time the biker opened his mouth or when I would hear their friend Mario’s (Greg Cirulnick) fake Italian accent. It was enough to make me cringe. Also, they didn’t explain too much of the characters’ back story making me care less if they got killed or not. Lastly, I found the story line to be so convoluted and predictable that I lost interest before the movie even ended. This movie took the bad and cheesy horror flick clichés to a whole new level.

There were some things I did like about Midnight Movie, such as the soundtrack, the opening menu, the extras, and some of the special effects. I found the background music and the soundtrack to be very fitting for the mood of the film. Also, I thought it was cool how the opening menu made you feel like you were in an old movie theater. For a 3 year old DVD, this was packed with a lot of extras. It had everything from trailers to director commentary to a deleted scene to outtakes to a cast featurette, which I found amusing to watch. Lastly, most of the special effects weren’t too bad. This movie had its fair share of blood and gore and looked realistic for the most part. However, I did not like the electrocution scene because it looked too cheesy and could have either been left out or presented a little better.

Overall, this movie had a couple of good elements to it, but the major negatives overshadowed all of that. I am giving this movie a “D+” for its predictable storyline full of horrible actors that I cared less about getting killed because I had no idea who they were in the first place.