A midnight screening of a 1970s cult horror film becomes a wholesale bloodbath after the members of the audience see one of their friends butchered on the big screen, and quickly surmise that there's a madman in the theater who seeks to slaughter them all. It was just another run down movie house in a small suburban town: what better place for a screening of a true cult classic? But this isn't your typical horror film, because years ago, the director had been locked away in a psychiatric hospital after having a complete mental breakdown. The teens at the screening have no idea that he escaped from the hospital nearly five years ago, and that chances are good he's still out there somewhere. When the film starts to roll and the heckling begins, the atmosphere in the theater is loose and fun. Giddiness gives way to deep-rooted dread, however, when the horrified audience is forced to watch as one of their good friends is viciously murdered right before their very eyes. This is no movie, and when the audience tries to flee they realize that the same psycho they just saw on the silver screen has now trapped them all in the theater. With no hope of escape and their numbers thinning fast, the survivors must now figure out a way to turn the tables on the very same killer that they once rooted for in their favorite slasher flick. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Review by All Movie Guide
Jack Messitt's Midnight Movie pays homage to exactly what the title suggests it would: pulpy genre movies with gaping holes in their logic and execution, making them suited for no one more discerning than the kitsch-loving crowds that come out on Friday night. It's appropriate, then, that Midnight Movie is exactly one of these movies itself. That's both a compliment and an indictment. The midnight movie that plays in Midnight Movie is actually the best part about Messitt's film. Modeled on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (and hailing from the same time period), "The Dark Beneath" -- a cult horror that sent its director to the insane asylum, according to the film's mythology -- features a bunch of dippy hippies on a road trip, whose broken-down car leaves them in the murderous path of a rustic man wearing overalls and a partial skull as his grungy mask. He uses a cone-shaped corkscrew blade bigger than his fist to punch through flesh. This stuff is great, and Messitt has given his killer distinctively menacing, and memorable, traits. What doesn't make much sense, even in the notoriously forgiving realm of the horror movie, is how the killer appears at a midnight screening of his own movie, starts killing audience members one by one, then seamlessly edits live footage of their murders into the movie as it unspools in the projection booth. It would be tempting to say that it doesn't matter -- that the film is such a faithful send-up, the killer's powers over space and time are illogical by design. But the truth is, it does affect a viewer's enjoyment -- just a little bit. Still, for having a relatively small budget and a cast of unknowns capably filling out the slate of victims, Messitt has come up with a tasty little treat here. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide