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Prejusa’s “The Midnight Special” has the best intentions.
It tries hard to be “Reno 911!” with a twist of “Buffy,” but it just
doesn’t pull it off. Though the graphics work throughout is usually
above par, I wish we’d seen much less of the film and much more focus on
the plot. Prejusa seems to stretch the film out up to a hundred minutes,
for a premise that’s really only worthy of fifty minutes. The entire
film is a heavy amount of instructional video for a secret organization
that hunts monsters. In the opening we watch through infrared as a
monster cop arrives during a disturbance and proceeds to hunt down a
vampire. We’re then thrown into the comedy element without so much as a
preamble. I was actually quite surprised this ended up being a horror
comedy, and not the horror film I assumed it would be. That had no
bearing on the film’s review, it’s just an observation. Meanwhile,
Prejusa seems to almost have the comedy down pat, but he’s just never
there.
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The interviews are flat, and often times the gags go on
way too long. The interrogation of a man at gunpoint
believed to be a vampire would have gone off well enough if
shortened. The actors, for all their best efforts also never
quite tackle comedy timing as well as they should. And
sadly, “The Midnight Special” sets up much more questions
than it tells a story. We're told in the opening that the
entire film is an instructional video for this elite force.
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So we go on to interviews, hunting footage, and so on.
And then we suddenly head into an officer's house where
he's conversing with his ex-wife, and it completely meanders from the
original plot point. Is this footage of these divorcees arguing a part
of the video, or something else entirely? If this
is
one of the most secret organization in the world, why do they drive
around in large blue trucks? Why conspicuous for an organization
supposedly better than the FBI, or Police? Why are they on duty in
regular clothing? If this is a video being conducted by the
organization, why is the cameraman so scared of them? Wouldn’t this
organization have a better tap on its agents? Either way, “The Midnight
Special” tries anxiously, but really never gets where it wants to.
Ultimately, "The Midnight Special" would
have worked much, much better as a forty minute short film instead of a
feature length horror comedy. The story is much too abbreviated to be
stretched and padded to almost a hundred minutes. The comedy misses, the
monster plot is secondary, and the emphases on the interviews is placed
with too much importance for what they offer us. It's an admirable
effort, but it's ultimately ill-conceived.
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