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Creature-Feature After Midnight Is Killed By A Buckshot Of Clichés
Heartbreak can be a savage thing. It’s a primal ache that creeps up on you in the middle of the night, ferociously roaring and threatening to tear your heart into tiny pieces. This metaphor is made literal in the horror-drama After Midnight, which focuses on a man-versus-monster battle that begins after the dropping of a devastating Dear John letter.
Jeremy Gardner and Christian Stella, co-directors of the 2015 comedy Tex Montana Will Survive!, reteam on the shared helm of After Midnight. Gardner also wrote the script and stars as Hank, a down-home country boy who loves hunting, fixing up his family’s remote old house, and throwing back peanut wine with his girlfriend Abby (Brea Grant). That is until Abby vanishes, leaving behind a note that offers little explanation as to why. Yet this is the least of Hank’s worries. Because every night since she’s been gone, he’s been visited by a strange beast that screams and claws at his front door, furious to get inside.
On his own, Hank fends it off with a shotgun and a sofa that he uses as a barricade. But as the days stretch into weeks, he reluctantly turns to his friends for help. Good-humored yokel Wade (Henry Zebrowski) commiserates with a rant about scampering panthers and extraterrestrials, but Wade is also…
