Midnight Mass

After an apparently outbreak of a mysterious virus, the world is dominated by vampires helped by the traitors Vichys. The atheist Gwen Waters (Pamela Karp) leaves the small town of St. Anthony in her bicycle trying to find the alcoholic Priest Joe Cahill (Douglas Gibson) and bring him back to her town to give hope to the human dwellers. Father Joe rebuilds the church with the support of some locals but is attacked by vampires and Vichys leaded by the evil Father Alberto Palmeri (Marvin W. Schwartz), in a battle between good and evil.

"Midnight Mass" has a promising beginning that explains what has happened to the world through footages of broadcasting news. Unfortunately, after the first three or four minutes, the story becomes a complete mess. However, the acting is the worst, with amateurish performances of Pamela Karp and Douglas Gibson in the lead roles, and with the ham actor Marvin W. Schwartz performing Father Alberto Palmeri. It is ridiculous the way he speaks the sentences, and I do not recall any other actor or actress with such bad speech. I ruined my Saturday night watching this crap on DVD, deceived by its great initial five minutes. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "A Missa da Meia Noite" ("The Midnight Mass")

I have so many positive comments for the current wave of horror movies that are coming out, straight-to-video and theatrically. The Experiment, May, House of 1000 Corpses, and even Wrong Turn were all solid horror excursions. Too bad this one isn't. I picked up Midnight Mass because it was a Lion's Gate release and Fangoria had a write-up about it in a recent issue that made it seem interesting. If that's why you're thinking about picking it up, put it down NOW! It sucks, no vampire humor intended. The film opens with a brilliant documentary style account of the world being overrun by vampires. It pulls you right in and builds up your expectations. It soon falls flat because the actors are terribly amateurish and the dialogue is annoying. Every time the lead actress opened her mouth I wanted someone to slap her down. And the lead priest looks like some guy they found at a Pantera concert while the evil priest could be Joe Pesci's bad acting twin. The flick is painfully dull as well. The whole experience was disappointing to say the least. If you want a better F. Paul Wilson adaptation, rent The Keep.

This not so epic vampire film tells the story of a shamed priest and an atheist surviving in a world where vampires have become the majority.

First of all let me be clear this is really terrible! The acting is laughable, the random overreaction shouty outbursts are hilariously bad and the movie is heavily pro Christianity which really got my back up.

The film almost felt like propaganda, I won't spoil anything but the way the film plays out really underlines my statement.

All round total mess and not worth the time of anyone but the most hardcore of vampire movie fan.

The Good:

Nothing

The Bad:

The appalling acting

The heavy pro Christianity vibe

Rock-bottom rotten. A promising premise (reminiscent of stories in "Under the Fang") and a somewhat creative opening few minutes -- tracking a vampire apocalypse from the point-of-view of TV news clips -- are red herrings in this presumably straight-to-video release.

Wherever the dividing line is between "low-budget" and "indie", this movie is well on the losing side. The acting is entirely amateur and ranges from the sub-par (for example, the goth youth collaborators) to the merely dull (alcoholic hero Father Joe) to the whopping ludicrous (Marvin Schwartz as a Catholic priest-turned-vampire). The direction as such is incomprehensible. A dreadful, rambling script is partially credited to horror author F. Paul Wilson, who also briefly appears.

Don't be misled by the colorful video box! This trash is impossible to watch in its entirety, and not worth the wear on your DVD player.

Initially promising vampire movie opens with a montage sequence of television news programs detailing the death of civilization as we know it--a disease that starts in the Middle East and spreads throughout the world, wiping out huge swaths of population in every country as a result. By the end of the newscasts we find that the disease has finally devastated the USA and that the disease story was actually a cover--the real culprit for all the death and devastation was vampires. The intriguing opening suggests that this might be for vampire movies what 28 Days was for zombie movies--an attempt to inject some fresh life into a very tired horror genre--but then the movie proper actually starts and it takes about forty five seconds for all of that initial promise to disappear. Bad production values and laughably awful acting sink Midnight Mass completely. The script has some good ideas, but it hardly matters when the rest of the movie is so poorly made. Fans of evangelical Christian movies might enjoy this, though, since the material is quite a bit more aggressively Christian than most vampire movies--in large part the script seems designed to show a plucky young female atheist the error of her ways and make her pay in the end for her unforgivable lack of faith. While I said previously that the script had some good ideas, this wasn't one of them. If bad acting and Christian sermonizing are your thing, by all means see Midnight Mass. If you want to see a scary horror movie, take a pass.