Midnight Disease (2010)
Studio: Brain Damage Films
Theatrical Release: Are you kidding?
DVD Release: April 3rd, 2012
Rating: Unrated!
Directed by Ryan Fowler & Robbie Ribspreader
Review by Craig Sorensen
Now this is what I was expecting from Brain Damage Films, cheap, amateurish and boring. I really can’t think of anything nice to say about this film. I guess I should cut it some slack as it seems like it was made by some college kids in their fucking dorm room. But I just can’t, because Midnight Disease commits the cardinal sin of B-movies. B-movie fans will put up with a lot (bad acting, bad scripts, bad directing, bad photography, bad special effects-all things that this film is guilty of) but for fuck’s sake, don’t make the goddamn thing boring! Give us a shitty looking decapitation, some fake tits, something! I mean, we paid our hard earned money, give us some fucking entertainment already.
So things start out bad when we are introduced to our sad-sack protagonist Jack Jones (even his name is boring). He’s a writer (that’s different that making movies isn’t it?) who’s stuck with a bad case of writer’s block. He helpfully points out at one point that writer’s block is known as the ‘Midnight Disease’ because I guess it takes place at night? There is actually a book called The Midnight Disease by Alice Flaherty about the real psychological disorder hypergraphia, in which the sufferer is overcome with urge to write. That sounds like the basis of an interesting story, of course the movie kind of ignores that for some half-assed vampire shit.
So Jack is, I guess, a bestselling author because of his previous book “Radioactive Vampires from Mars”. I’m going to go off on a tangent for a moment so bear with me. I fucking hate the __ __ from __ joke. By that I mean “Giant Rats from Venus” or “Killer Lesbians from Pluto” or “Radioactive Vampires from Mars”. It’s just fucking lazy writing from people who don’t know or fucking care about the genre that they’re ripping off or making fun of. If that’s the best joke that you can come up with while poking fun at science fiction then just fucking stop. You have nothing to add to the conversation. Go home and go back to bed.
So, anyway, Jack is having trouble writing and he drinks a lot, because obviously that’s what writers do. One day someone drops off a bottle of blood on his doorstep. And then he drinks it and some girl in halloween makeup walks in and starts writing. Long story short, he has to supply this mystery girl with blood so she’ll write his book. There is a twist at the end but you’ll see it coming a mile away (SPOILER ALERT, he’s fucking crazy).
So, most of this movie takes place in someone’s apartment/dorm room. Actually, most of it takes place in Jack’s bedroom. Maybe the filmmaker’s parents were home and they couldn’t use the rest of the house. This lends absolutely no ambiance to the picture. Shots are composed in front of bare white walls. I mean, throw a picture frame up there or something. Take an afternoon and go to the fucking thrift store. You need to put a little bit of effort into the production. Look, making movies is hard. If it isn't, if you don't want to fucking kill yourself doing it then you probably aren't doing it correctly. You can't just point a video camera at a wall in your apartment and start shooting. It'll look like this. No matter how fucking good you think your script is. Which, by the way, is fucking boring. It’s just so full of film school clichés. Of course, Jack has a hot girl neighbor that is going out with a guy who is so wrong for her and why can’t she see that Jack is cool and she’ll love his penis? The movie is about a writer, which is absolutely not a film director because that’s all the kid knows. Jack has a ‘crazy dude’ best friend who wandered in from the ‘90s and gets to say all the cool one liners. I just think that if you’re going to go to the effort of making a feature film (even if it’s just shot on video) you should probably go out of your way to make something unique. If you’re just going to regurgitate the same old fucking shit, what’s the point?
The whole time I was watching this I kept thinking “I’ve got a Blu-Ray of Twins of Evil sitting over there and I just got a copy of the Hiroshi Teshigahara box set and I’m stuck watching this piece of shit”. I think that about sums it up for me.
Theatrical Release: Are you kidding?
DVD Release: April 3rd, 2012
Rating: Unrated!
Directed by Ryan Fowler & Robbie Ribspreader
Review by Craig Sorensen
Now this is what I was expecting from Brain Damage Films, cheap, amateurish and boring. I really can’t think of anything nice to say about this film. I guess I should cut it some slack as it seems like it was made by some college kids in their fucking dorm room. But I just can’t, because Midnight Disease commits the cardinal sin of B-movies. B-movie fans will put up with a lot (bad acting, bad scripts, bad directing, bad photography, bad special effects-all things that this film is guilty of) but for fuck’s sake, don’t make the goddamn thing boring! Give us a shitty looking decapitation, some fake tits, something! I mean, we paid our hard earned money, give us some fucking entertainment already.
So things start out bad when we are introduced to our sad-sack protagonist Jack Jones (even his name is boring). He’s a writer (that’s different that making movies isn’t it?) who’s stuck with a bad case of writer’s block. He helpfully points out at one point that writer’s block is known as the ‘Midnight Disease’ because I guess it takes place at night? There is actually a book called The Midnight Disease by Alice Flaherty about the real psychological disorder hypergraphia, in which the sufferer is overcome with urge to write. That sounds like the basis of an interesting story, of course the movie kind of ignores that for some half-assed vampire shit.
So Jack is, I guess, a bestselling author because of his previous book “Radioactive Vampires from Mars”. I’m going to go off on a tangent for a moment so bear with me. I fucking hate the __ __ from __ joke. By that I mean “Giant Rats from Venus” or “Killer Lesbians from Pluto” or “Radioactive Vampires from Mars”. It’s just fucking lazy writing from people who don’t know or fucking care about the genre that they’re ripping off or making fun of. If that’s the best joke that you can come up with while poking fun at science fiction then just fucking stop. You have nothing to add to the conversation. Go home and go back to bed.
So, anyway, Jack is having trouble writing and he drinks a lot, because obviously that’s what writers do. One day someone drops off a bottle of blood on his doorstep. And then he drinks it and some girl in halloween makeup walks in and starts writing. Long story short, he has to supply this mystery girl with blood so she’ll write his book. There is a twist at the end but you’ll see it coming a mile away (SPOILER ALERT, he’s fucking crazy).
So, most of this movie takes place in someone’s apartment/dorm room. Actually, most of it takes place in Jack’s bedroom. Maybe the filmmaker’s parents were home and they couldn’t use the rest of the house. This lends absolutely no ambiance to the picture. Shots are composed in front of bare white walls. I mean, throw a picture frame up there or something. Take an afternoon and go to the fucking thrift store. You need to put a little bit of effort into the production. Look, making movies is hard. If it isn't, if you don't want to fucking kill yourself doing it then you probably aren't doing it correctly. You can't just point a video camera at a wall in your apartment and start shooting. It'll look like this. No matter how fucking good you think your script is. Which, by the way, is fucking boring. It’s just so full of film school clichés. Of course, Jack has a hot girl neighbor that is going out with a guy who is so wrong for her and why can’t she see that Jack is cool and she’ll love his penis? The movie is about a writer, which is absolutely not a film director because that’s all the kid knows. Jack has a ‘crazy dude’ best friend who wandered in from the ‘90s and gets to say all the cool one liners. I just think that if you’re going to go to the effort of making a feature film (even if it’s just shot on video) you should probably go out of your way to make something unique. If you’re just going to regurgitate the same old fucking shit, what’s the point?
The whole time I was watching this I kept thinking “I’ve got a Blu-Ray of Twins of Evil sitting over there and I just got a copy of the Hiroshi Teshigahara box set and I’m stuck watching this piece of shit”. I think that about sums it up for me.
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