{"id":32154,"date":"2019-10-25T00:34:36","date_gmt":"2019-10-25T04:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=32154"},"modified":"2019-10-20T04:39:46","modified_gmt":"2019-10-20T08:39:46","slug":"after-midnight-1989","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/25\/after-midnight-1989\/","title":{"rendered":"After Midnight (1989)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Wheat Brothers have managed to rack up a pretty interesting body of work in the horror genre since the eighties, and with \u201cAfter Midnight\u201d they deliver what is pretty middling as an anthology. In a period that included \u201cTales from the Darkside: The Movie\u201d shortly after, \u201cAfter Midnight\u201d doesn\u2019t re-invent the wheel. It\u2019s mostly just an entry of the decade that serves its intended purpose as a horror film that could double as filler for a boring Saturday night.<\/p>\n

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Allison is talked in to attending a Psychology of Fear class by her best friend, and is inexplicably nervous about attending. The class is run by the unorthodox Professor Edward Derek, who delights in tormenting his class by staging a fake suicide with a gun. After being suspended, he invites his class to his house to indulge in telling true horror stories of their own in an effort to scare one another. What ensues is a trio of mostly passable tales that don\u2019t nearly resemble terrifying but have their high points. I did very much appreciate the epilogue that is left up to interpretation for the audience, channeling \u201cInvaders from Mars.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Old Dark House\u201d is a goofy opening segment about a young couple Joan and Kevin driving down the road at night after a date for Kevin\u2019s birthday and stall on the side. Reluctant to leave, Joan convinces Kevin to seek help at the abandoned Griffith Mansion known for its paranormal activity. This segment is mostly just one big punch line that works for its far-fetched premise. \u201cA Night on the Town\u201d centers on four underage girls clubbing for the night looking for a club to sneak in to. After their car runs out of gas, they realize they\u2019re on the wrong part of the city, and are now being stalked by a maniacal homeless man and his two rabid dogs.<\/p>\n

This feels less like horror and more like action and doesn\u2019t pack a punch nor an ironic twist, but it at least gets points for the inclusion of slasher final girls like Judie Aronson, and Penelope Sudrow. Finally, \u201cAll Night Caller\u201d is a taut thriller about an all night switchboard operator named Alex (Marg Helgenberger), who is being tormented and stalked by a psychotic caller named Richard. When Richard believes Alex is plotting against him, he makes her his next target. This segment is a bit eerie and definitely has a good time with its gut punch of a final scene. As for the whole of \u201cAfter Midnight,\u201d it\u2019s not a stellar anthology by any means, but I loved the cast, and general novelty of the whole shebang.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Wheat Brothers have managed to rack up a pretty interesting body of work in the horror genre since the eighties, and with \u201cAfter Midnight\u201d they deliver what is pretty middling as an anthology. In a period that included \u201cTales from the Darkside: The Movie\u201d shortly after, \u201cAfter Midnight\u201d doesn\u2019t re-invent the wheel. It\u2019s mostly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12],"tags":[103,477,703,1008,1087],"class_list":["post-32154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-halloween-horror-month","category-movie-reviews","tag-anthology","tag-horror","tag-mystery","tag-supernatural","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32156,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32154\/revisions\/32156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}