Two young girls and a boy are gathered around candles that have just been extinguished, frantically trying to reignite them while counting to 10. They draw a circle of salt around them. The circle gets broken. One of the girls gets snatched away. The other two race downstairs, the boy sprinting towards the door. “You can’t go outside! It’s against the rules!” the girl yells, but the boy has already left. She screams after him, the boy turns around … and explodes like a blood-filled balloon.
So begins the bonkers yet banal The Midnight Man, its opening scene radiating unintentional hilarity. It’s the first big laugh of an occasionally very funny horror attempt, as The Midnight Man has zero genuine scares in its arsenal. The story comes from CreepyPasta origins, the online forum that has roots in the famous “Slenderman” case. If only this slow-paced and silly movie had the same exciting yet uncomfortable vibes that true-crime story had; this take on CreepyPasta is so uncooked it’s still in the box.
The premise picks up decades after the events of the opening scene, where a “teenager” named Alex (current Days of our Lives regular Gabrielle Haugh) is taking care of her grandmother (Lin Shaye, of the Insidious franchise), who we soon find to be the surviving girl of the opening scene because the movie wastes no time rubbing the obvious in our faces. Alex and her friend Miles (Grayson Gabriel) eventually stumble upon “The Midnight Game,” an overly explained activity that includes candles, a salt shaker, marking your signature in blood and, of course, “The Midnight Man” himself (who looks like a combo between a lizard, a Mortal Kombat character and a literal piece of shit).
Basically, you summon the titular demon-whatever at midnight and must survive his game until 3:33 AM. If you end up in his grasp, The Midnight Man will psychologically penetrate you and cause you to experience your worst fears. Robert Englund (better known as the actor who plays Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise) also shows up—presumably to collect a paycheck and ham-it-up with his old A Nightmare on Elm Street co-star Lin Shaye (who, for what it’s worth, gives a maniacally-inspired performance here that is hands down the film’s strongest asset).
And yet in all its blatant badness The Midnight Man is an undeniable hoot—so, so dumb yet undeniably enjoyable. Its acting is so wooden you’d be hard-pressed to distinguish the actors from ventriloquist dummies, and the script is an absolute mess. But the scent of this hot garbage fire is just so fascinatingly awful that you let your nostrils burn just a little bit longer out of sheer curiosity. This perversely inquisitive nature pays off as The Midnight Man quickly becomes a disastrous parody of itself, crashing and burning in ways that you just can’t avert your eyes from. This is a bad film, yes, but its sincere attempts become uproarious failures. It may not have been the filmmaker’s intent, but what we have here is the first real contender for “Best Comedy of 2018.”
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