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Review: Lin Shaye and Robert Englund Reunite in “The Midnight Man”

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There’s a brand new movie monster heading your way. He’s called The Midnight Man and he’ll be invading your homes on Video On Demand this week in a movie by the same name!

It all begins in the 1950s when a group of young friends play a game that invokes the titular character. It’s a dangerous game and one by one they die by not following the rules.

When only one is left, it seems the game is over and a young girl named Anna is finally safe.

But we’re horror fans and we know better than that, right?

Moving forward in time we find that Anna still lives in the same home, and is succumbing to dementia. Her granddaughter, Alex, has come to stay with her, and late one night the girl discovers the rules for the game in the attic.

Naturally, she and her friends decide to play.

The film, though problematic at times, is quite entertaining and has genuinely scary moments largely thanks to Lin Shaye’s performance as the older Anna and Kyle Strauts in the role of the monstrous Midnight Man who uses your own fears to kill you.

Shaye never brings less than her A-game and she uses her considerable talent to own the role of Anna. She is vulnerable, sad, menacing, and terrifying at once as she weaves in and out of her haze of supposed dementia.

Kyle Strauts fully embodies the Midnight Man sweeping in and out of the darkness with murderous gusto. His 6’9″ presence is enhanced by the the makeup designs by Doug Morrow and his team.

Speaking of darkness…it’s a sad thing when technical decisions end up detracting from rather than enhancing a film. The Midnight Man unfortunately suffers at the hands of its cinematographer, Gavin Kelly, with many scenes so dark it was hard to see facial expressions or distinguish details onscreen.

Likewise, the film’s editing which was uneven at best, led to pacing problems especially toward the climax of the film which made Robert Englund’s arrival, to warn that perhaps Anna isn’t suffering from dementia after all, a welcome boon.

It was good to see Englund and Shaye together again. They last co-starred in 2005’s remake of 2001 Maniacs, and their chemistry onscreen is horror perfection.

Englund brings a stage showman’s polished dramatics to the screen providing a balance to Shaye’s more raw and primal performance. It’s a standoff worthy of the early Universal monster movies, and one of the best moments in the film.

Gabrielle Haugh, Emily Haine, and Grayson Gabriel fill the roles of the Alex and her friends Kelly and Miles, respectively. Of the three, only Grayson Gabriel really seems to commit fully to his role making Miles the most believable and likable of the three.

Technical problems aside The Midnight Man is a fun flick worth a watch to see the fine performances from some of the genre’s finest actors.

Keep your eyes peeled for The Midnight Man on Video on Demand from IFC Releasing on January 22, 2018. Check out the trailer below!

Featured Image from IMDb.com

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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