Sunday, October 21, 2012

Countdown to Halloween Day 21 -- Should Have Just Re-watched "Popcorn" : A Review of "Midnight Matinee"

Midnight Matinee is a 1989 slasher flick set in a small town in British Columbia where a horror movie festival two years prior had ended on its first night due to a murder in the theater.  Now, the theater is holding another horror film festival to help promote a new horror film starring a local actor, and the murders are starting up again.

Going in to this film, I was slightly optimistic; a horror movie set in a movie theater showing horror films has a lot of promise (see: Popcorn).  Unfortunately, the handful of times the film manages to take advantage of its setting are not enough to redeem the rest of the film which is guilty of the crime of being boring.  The characters were largely obnoxious, off-putting, or bland, and much of their behavior lack any logical basis.  Now, as this is a slasher film, the latter part isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, but with only a handful of murders spread throughout the film, it needed more engaging connective tissue between them.  Sadly, the only thing this film has going for it is bit parts for Don S. Davis (General Hammon of Stargate: SG-1) and William B. Davis (The Cigarette Smoking Man of The X-Files), and the novelty of watching their younger selves paled pretty quickly.

Midnight Matinee is neither well-done, nor bad enough to be entertaining; it's just a bland time-suck.

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