Prime Time: Ten Minutes To Midnight (2021)

A horror film starring Caroline Williams, an actress arguably best known for her role as a potential final girl/DJ in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, Ten Minutes To Midnight has her playing Amy Marlowe, a DJ about to slog through her usual late-night slot with the threat of impending forced retirement looming over her head. As well as the stress of the situation, which includes spending time with a young woman who may end up being her replacement (Sienna, played by Nicole Kang), Amy has some issues stemming from the fact that she appears to have been bitten by a bat on the way in for her shift. The weather outside is bad enough that the people in the station cannot leave the station, and Amy finds her mental state deteriorating.

I was wary of this film before I even pressed play. Although not too familiar with Williams, I knew that her name was being used as the main selling point. And I figured that once again putting her in the role of a DJ was an easy way to get some brownie points from horror fans, meaning there was a chance of less effort being made in other departments.

I was right.

This is a mess, albeit an occasionally entertaining one. The first half mixes some potential vampire shenanigans with the constant stress piled on the lead character, who knows her days employed at the station are numbered. Then things change, and not for the better, leaving you with a whole film that doesn’t succeed in being either scary, gory, funny, or insightful.

Directed by Erik Bloomquist, who also co-wrote the script with his brother Carson Bloomquist, this is a film that feels like the people making it may have had more fun than anyone who ends up watching it. It’s disappointingly repetitive and spirals towards a very weak conclusion, but some of the cast do enough to stop it from being as bad as it otherwise could have been.

Williams is okay in her role, at least able to put on a fantastic “fuck you” pose to those around her that she can’t even bother feigning niceness to. Kang is a highlight, acting sweet and nice until things take a severe turn. You also get some fun turns from William Youmans, Nicholas Tucci, and Adam Weppler.

The camera generally points in the right direction, and other technical aspects are competent enough, but nothing is done that helps to elevate the material. That could have been a case of making more of the radio station setting, or it could have been achieved by streamlining the concept away from the surreal turn taken in the third act.

If you have a chance to see this one, my advice is to “turn the dial”.

3/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Prime Time: Blind (2019)

There's something quite mesmerising about Blind, and I don't mean that in a good way. Or maybe I do. It's an interesting oddity, which certainly makes it hard to forget once it's all over. I'm really not sure what the intentions of the film-makers were though. Did they want to make some cult comedy work, or were they aiming for something dark and serious? Either way, it doesn't work. 

Sarah French plays Faye, an actress left blind after a botched surgery. She spends her time chatting to others in her support group, mainly the equally blind Sophia (Caroline) and the handsome Luke (Tyler Gallant, playing a character unable to speak without the aid of a voicebox device), and wandering around a house filled with way more candles than any blind person should surely have. Unbeknownst to Faye, she is the target of an obsessed killer (Pretty Boy, played by Jed Rowen).

Directed by Marcel Walz, and written by Joe Knetter, it's hard to think of who to blame more for this amusing mess. French does the best she can, and I'll get back to the performances later, but can only do so much. 

I'll start with the script. Knetter obviously has some ideas buried in the material here, ideas that he doesn't flesh out enough, but they're in there nonetheless. Faye has adjusted to her new state, and seems to have adjusted better than I think I would have managed, but her mental state is a different matter. An actor makes their living from having eyes on them, which is where I think Knetter wanted to play around more in his script, and Faye doesn't feel too good about encountering people who recognise her and wonder what has happened. As Pretty Boy stalks and watches her, is it often just the same way anyone else would look at her without having to worry about her spotting them? Maybe, but the material isn't executed well enough to make this point effectively.

Walz makes one bad decision after another, whether it's his shot composition or the way he holds on scenes for so long that they become laughable (the best example of this being a moment in which Faye rambled on at great length to a presence she thinks is Luke). I haven't seen anything else from Walz, and this has reassured me that I haven't missed out on anything major. He seems to have a problem grasping the basics of horror film-making, although there's at least a degree of technical competence to keep things from being unwatchably bad.

French is good in the lead role, good enough to make it obvious why she was picked ahead of anyone else in the cast anyway. I was worried that she would overplay things while acting blind, but she strikes a good balance, for the most part. Williams and Gallant are okay, although both suffer from being the supporting characters who end up involved in scenes with tinkly emotional music (a technical term that musicians will know) making it clear that they are helping the lead character on her journey. Rowen has to stand around and wear a mask, which he does.

As I said, there's almost a good point to be made here, even as the standard horror genre stuff keeps being mishandled, but it's not successful. And it's certainly nowhere near successful enough to warrant the second instalment promised/threatened during the end credits.

3/10

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews