Midnight
Midnight
A teenage girl runs away from home because police officer/stepfather puts the moves on her. Hitchhiking to California, she's picked up by two guys who are also traveling cross-country. Along the way, they decide to camp out in the woods and run across a family of Satanists who keep their dead mother in the attic.
Matthias_812 reviewedApril 3, 2025
If you’re adventurous enough to sift through nearly forgotten corners of low budget horror, there are some real treasures that make the exploration worth it. Midnight is a regional horror mean streak capturing that bleak, dead-leaf-littered bare trees atmosphere. Packing grisly grindhouse jolts with 80’s satanic panic into a disturbing backwoods nightmare; it earned its position on the Video Nasty list.
Co-writer of the exemplary Night of the Living Dead, John Russo, directs his first horror feature on a meager $70,000 budget. Tom Savini is hired for gore effects of which are impressive as always even if recycled from other films he worked on. This was the peak era of his career and was taking on so many films at once he stated he doesn’t remember doing much of his work for Midnight nor ever watched the film himself.
At its core, Midnight channels the spirit of Texas Chain Saw Massacre from the demented family slayings together down to the unapologetic morbid tone. Russo presents the destructive forces of superstition and religion as if each are on two sides of the same coin punching a conclusion where both sides lose.