Dead by Midnight (Y2Kill)

Dead by Midnight is a public access TV channel presented by a female goth host, who introduces four stories of the macabre, complete with ghoulish commercial breaks.

This is one of those horror anthologies where each segment is helmed by a different director. Different directors, but a similar lack of talent, all four stories being utterly atrocious.

First up is Hellevangelist, directed by Hannah Fierman, in which an old woman with a grudge pays a visit to a TV evangelist. The cheap production values, lame acting and bad storytelling set the standard for the rest of the film.

Story number two, Jasper (directed by Torey Haas), involves an animator coming face to face with the murderous cartoon cat created by her father. Holy cow, this one is bad! The CGI effects for the killer kitty are awful (as is the character design) - if you don't have the budget or the technical know-how to do the idea justice, just don't do it!

Anissa Matlock's Clean UR Room sees a teenage slob being stalked by his dirty washing; it's every bit as crap as it sounds.

The penultimate story is Heroes of Time, in which a group of nerds playing an online, virtual-reality, fantasy RPG become trapped in the game and are attacked by a big smurf. Naff visual effects and terrible performances make this a stinker of epic proportions.

The final tale is Gut Cruncher, directed by Jay Holloway: three high school wimps are given a chance to pass gym class - all they have to do is survive six minutes in the ring with demon wrestler Gut Cruncher. It's played for laughs; it didn't get any from me.

The tongue-in-cheek commercial breaks are plain embarrassing.

Horror icons Kane Hodder and Linnea Quigley take time out from their hectic convention schedules to lend the film some 'star power'.

1/10.

I heard about this from a personal friend of mine who is actually in this film. It's not too often these days where we have a film about a host that shows different stories to us, especially the sub genre of Horror Comedy itself I feel being uncommon these days. There are several stories and they are each about 10 minutes or so. Some are hilarious, bloody, bizarre, disgusting, surreal and flat out weird. The creativity, the mix of some Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror, it's use of incredible 80s nostalgic practical effects, crude humor, comedic writing and monsters is enough for Dead By Midnight Y2Kill to keep you quite entertained!

It's pretty lazy. The writing is mediocre. They cliche'd the tropes. The jokes are stale and stolen from YouTube. I was honestly surprised to find out it wasn't a Netflix movie. Exposition by way of poor dialogue. Inane "plot" lines. It's go Kane Hodder in it with a speaking role, make of that what you will.

Overall it feels like people pretending to ironically like horror schlock while actually trying (but failing) to make a good movie. They borrowed pretty much everything and did it so poorly. But the images look good, but technology shouldn't be mistaken for talent. ........................................................................................................................................................................................remove the 600 char or I'll sign you up for Bag'o D.

I watch a fair amount of horror anthologies. In fact, I just commented in one review that nobody expects the wrap-around stories linking the short films together to be any good. So, naturally, the very next one I watched was amazing.

The basic premise is there is a TV show from hell streaming around the world trying to suck up souls. Everything about it is just great. You have a witty, charismatic host (notable genre actress Hannah Fierman, who also did some writing, directing and producing), super crazy hellacious commercials that are some of the best bits, and cameos from famous horror actors aplenty. It was just great fun. The short films themselves were a little bit more hit or miss, though.

The first one, "Hellevangelist," takes the cliched story of a Christian televangelist fleecing his flock but keeps it fresh by tackling it from a slightly different angle.

The second, "Jasper," is all about a woman who keeps the family legacy of creating a show about a cartoon cat character alive after her father's death. The only problem is that the cat is real and not so concerned about keeping families alive. Yes, the CGI is not the best, but the details are good, the actresses are great, and it's just goofy fun.

Then we have "Clean UR Room," which was a bit too long for its very basic premise (a pile of dirty laundry takes on a life of its own) but still sort of goofy and sort of fun.

"Heroes of Time" takes the extreme cliche about an online fantasy world becoming reality (seriously, do we have any film with this setting that doesn't do this?) but does it with a few new touches. The people playing the game certainly do a good job of representing the diverse range of personalities drawn to this entertainment. The graphics of the online world are very much like that sort of game would really look, unlike most of the lame LARP tales we've gotten. It seems like it would have worked better in a different anthology, though.

The last is "Gut Cruncher." A coach decides to teach some slacker students a lesson by having them wrestle a demon for extra credit. Yeah, so it's not Shakespeare, just go with it. One boy seems like Where's Waldo come to life, but I couldn't tell if the others were also parodies of famous characters. The coach is your basic high school phys-ed teacher and then some. Gut Cruncher himself is big and blue and likes maiming people and eating energy bars. You even get demon cheerleaders. It's just stupid fun, but way more entertaining than it has any right to be base upon its description.

I honestly thought that this was probably the best horror anthology film I've seen in many years. It definitely leans more into the comedy side of horror comedy, though. It makes me curious about the TV show "Dead by Midnight (11pm Central)," which is by many of the same people but appears to have completely different stories. If I find an easy way to check it out, i will.

I enjoyed this more than I thought with the reviews , if you keep in the mind set that they know it's a b-horror comedy then it's great. The best parts are the mini commercials as they're hilarious and Kane Hodder is golden.