‘We fill in the blanks that we don’t understand…’
The idea of a monster as a metaphor has long been prevalent throughout horror. Hell, it harks back to Frankenstein’s Monster and Dracula and all those fellas. For Jeremy Gardner, director, writer and star of After Midnight, the monster might be a metaphor, it might not be. The fun for the audience is trying to work out which side the cookie is gonna crumble…
Hank (Gardner) and Abby (Brea Grant) are in a rut. Their relationship has stalled and their dream house is slowly becoming a prison. The fact that Gardner intercuts their current predicament with flashbacks to the good times at the start of their relationship only serves to highlight the cruel contrast between now and then. When Abby disappears one day, Hank starts to imagine that an insidious monster is stalking his nightmares. But how much of what he sees is real?
As with fellow auteur Jim Cummings, Gardner and his co-director Christian Stella take the humdrum minutiae of small town life in America and inject it with something… weird. After Midnight is an odd film. Scenes of hyper realistic mumblecore sit uneasily alongside more surreal flights of fancy with no real respect for linear storytelling or consistency in tone and atmosphere, but it mostly works. The more far out moments are perhaps a little too out there, but all the relationship beats are handled in a way that is heartbreakingly real.
After Midnight will be too weird for some, but for those of us willing to embrace our inner freak zone, there is plenty to enjoy here.