MIDNIGHTERS (2017)

Studio:       IFC Midnight
Director:    Julius Ramsay
Writer:       Alston Ramsay
Producer:  Alston Ramsay, Julius Ramsay
Stars:     Alex Essoe, Perla Haney-Jardine, Dylan McTee, Ward Horton, Andrew Rothenberg, Joseph Anderson

Review Score:

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Summary:

A troubled couple becomes embroiled in an escalating criminal conspiracy following an unexpected encounter on New Year’s Eve.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Outside of a New Year’s Eve party, Jeff and Lindsey Pittman briefly discuss the financial problems troubling their marriage. On their drive home afterward, Jeff becomes distracted and runs over a man on a deserted backwoods road.

Unable to get a cellphone signal, the couple puts the man in their car with the initial intention of driving him to a hospital. The man seemingly dies. Because both of them had been drinking, Jeff convinces Lindsey to take the body back to their house while they figure out what to do next.

While assessing the car’s damage, Jeff sees that the front license plate is missing. Jeff returns to the accident scene to retrieve it, but discovers police are already there.

Lindsey’s sister Hannah, who temporarily lives with the Pittmans, returns home from a date. The man in the garage unexpectedly revives and attacks her. Hannah gets a hold of the man’s gun and shoots him.

Jeff returns home in time to hear the gunshots. Although Hannah is distraught over killing a man, her sister explains why they cannot call the police. Hannah takes a sedative to sleep while Jeff and Lindsey clean up the garage and hide the body. Jeff and Lindsey are shocked to discover a slip of paper with their home address typed on it inside the man’s pocket.

Officers Varone and Campbell come to the house the next morning with the license plate. Despite conflicting details, Jeff and Lindsey stick to a story that they hit a deer in the road. The copes eventually leave after briefly inspecting the garage.

Hannah confesses to Jeff and Lindsey that the dead man was probably after her. Hannah explains that her boyfriend Richard was a stockbroker who bilked investors and was presumably murdered by his business partner. Hannah believes someone was sent to retrieve a bag of Richard’s that she still has.

The trio opens Richard’s bag to find a small wooden totem. Inside the totem is a claim slip from the Crown Hill Lodge bed and breakfast. While Lindsey stays behind in case the cops come back, Hannah and Jeff head to the lodge to turn in the slip.

Posing as a detective named Smith, Hannah’s boyfriend Richard arrives at the front door. Over the course of his suspicious questioning, Lindsey realizes Smith is not a detective. Lindsey tries to stab him, but Smith knocks Lindsey unconscious.

While Jeff waits in the car, Hannah goes into the lodge. She comes back with a bank deposit bag containing $50,000 in cash. Hannah balks when Jeff suggests that they don’t tell Lindsey about the money.

Lindsey wakes bound and gagged with duct tape. Smith beats her, demanding to know where Jeff and Hannah went as well as where the dead man’s body is.

Smith explores the house. He finds the body as well as the empty Indian totem. Meanwhile, Lindsey works her way free of her restraints. She grabs a fireplace poker and knocks Smith unconscious from behind.

When Jeff and Hannah return home, Lindsey has Smith tied to a chair in the basement. Smith asks to talk to Hannah under the pretense that she would have the most rationale head. Once they are alone, Hannah and Smith kiss. Smith asks to be freed, but Hannah refuses, as she wants to maintain the ruse that she does not know who Smith is.

Hannah tells Lindsey that Smith is willing to split the money with them if they let him go. She also reveals what Jeff asked her in the car outside the lodge to foster distrust. Lindsey discovers who Smith really is when she notices a charm on Hannah’s bracelet that matches Smith’s necklace.

To get him to disclose everything he knows, Lindsey and Jeff torture Smith by hammering nails through three of his fingertips. Jeff tells Lindsey that they have to kill Smith to keep him from coming after them. Jeff also implies that something will have to be done about Hannah, which Lindsey is vehemently against.

Hannah admits to Lindsey that Smith is Richard. Lindsey discovers that Hannah still has the claim slip from Crown Hill Lodge, which Hannah claims she kept as a memento. Jeff and Lindsey tie up Hannah and put her in the basement with Smith.

Jeff discovers that the $50,000 is apparently missing. He then walks in on Lindsey as she is in the middle of calling police to the house. Lindsey pulls a gun on her husband when she realizes he plans to kill Hannah in addition to Smith. A struggle ensues. Lindsey fights off Jeff and runs away.

Hannah and Smith break free in the basement. However, Smith then strangles Hannah to death.

With a gun in his hand, Jeff searches for Lindsey while trying to convince her Hannah must die. Jeff finds Lindsey and they fall on each other, but Smith puts an ax blade into Jeff’s back.

Smith starts strangling Lindsey. Lindsey stabs Smith in the throat. Smith discovers the missing money inside Jeff’s pants. Smith recovers the gun and prepares to shoot Lindsey.

Seeing flashing lights outside, Lindsey hits the garage door button. Smith turns to see Officers Varone and Campbell in the driveway. Varone and Campbell gun down Smith.

Several months later, Varone and Campbell drop off Lindsey, now dismissed from the hospital, at Crown Hill Lodge. Lindsey turns in the claim slip. In return she receives a large bag containing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash.

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Review:

Jeff and Lindsey’s already troubled marriage hits another bump in the road, literally, when Jeff mows over a man on the couple’s drive home from a New Year’s Eve celebration.  Panicking because both of them had been drinking, Jeff convinces a reluctant Lindsey to take the man back to their house instead of to a hospital while they calculate their next move.

A chaotic situation becomes more complicated when Lindsey’s sassy sister Hannah makes an assumption about the bloodied body and takes unexpected action.  Cops will be coming soon to ask questions no one is quite sure how to answer.

In the meantime, there is still much to uncover regarding the mystery man in the garage, because he wasn’t simply someone in the wrong place at the wrong time.  He was specifically on his way to Jeff and Lindsey’s house, and no one seems to know why.  The only thing for certain is everyone is hiding personal secrets connected to a conspiracy involving a cash stash that some will go to great lengths to capture.

How many murders would you be willing to cover up to keep $50,000?  I thought the manic madness of “68 Kill” (review here) was a far-fetched case of how much crime could be committed over a relatively small sum of money.  But the quartet composing the core cast of “Midnighters” resorts to incredibly violent extremes, and they’re spilling all this blood for $18,000 less.

Speaking of “68 Kill,” that movie’s growing snowball of “one thing leads to another” insanity has a tongue in its cheek that puts it on the subversively sly side of such a scenario.  “Midnighters” goes to the opposite extreme, unstacking its Russian nesting doll crime caper through bleak atmosphere and dour characters fit for attending a funeral.

The setup for “Midnighters” pumps it with Hitchcockian blood of extraordinary circumstances taking ordinary people from frying pan to fire to inferno to volcano.  Except the movie’s suspense is subdued by its sullen setting, resulting in less spirited energy when its noir-ish tone and tension is shouting to have a more scorching edge.

As can be the case with this kind of premise, plot progression is often implausible.  Shortly before the final scene, I thought to myself, “if the survivors ever tried explaining this sequence of events once it was all over, no one would ever believe it.”  Within moments of writing that note, a character explained everything (offscreen) to a particular pair of people, who then swallowed the story whole.

In the interest of enjoying escapist entertainment, overlooking improbabilities would be permissible if it weren’t for director Julius Ramsay’s curious choice to present each scene strictly straight.  “Midnighters” doesn’t have to be self-aware or even “fun” about its fantasy.  But buying into required disbelief isn’t rewarded by the same richness in storytelling that commonly comes in this vein of pulp fiction thriller.

Dylan McTee’s Jeff is a straight up sourpuss.  Perla Haney-Jardine’s Hannah starts as a rebellious firecracker before her smolder gets smothered with the same blasé blanket.  And Ward Horton plays his part like a pat cinema psychopath who has running mouth disease, spouting sinisterly whispered quips with unblinking eyes and high-arched brows.

Performances fulfill their roles precisely as written by Alston Ramsay, the other half of the brotherly duo behind the production.  It’s just that after initial personalities are established, scripting traps everyone in a loop of connecting plot dots instead of truly digging deeper into development.

For the story to really sizzle, “Midnighters” is in search of a stylistic spark it never fully finds.  Mood is instead strangely tuned for a supernatural ghost story in a Gothic haunted house, which is not where this dial should be set.  That’s not a crippling misstep, but it is a critical one.  Link that with a twisty tale needing one more coat of cleverness and characters that could use fresh paint themselves, and the murderous mystery dart only lands on the outskirts, despite aiming for the heart of the playfield.

Review Score:  55

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